What would you do about Virginia Tech?

[nef]

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Well. We have a society with an underclass and criminal element. Our gun laws are lax, and there are weapons all over the place. Said people have access to weapons, resulting in gun crimes. Also, unhinged loonies seem to have access to weapons. Gun crimes are common in this country. This leads me to conclude we would be safer without guns. We would also be safer with a more equitable society where people weren't so angry about things, but that isn't happening either.

Oh, and BTW, I am sure the reason that Nazi Germany and the USSR happened is because they rounded up the guns. Otherwise, there would have been a dedicated resistance against the tyrannical governments which would have overthrown them. Give me a break, can you say crushed like a grape?
Similarly, if there were a Russian or German Gandhi (and who knows, there might have been), he would have been the first lined up against the wall, along with the "armed militia leaders." Resistance is only effective against some forms of government.

This guerilla resistance pipe dream is a cheap excuse.

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The main problem with your argument is the disconnect between your policy preference and its results. Banning guns would not result in a situation where there are no guns. It would result in a larger black market for guns and a defenseless population. I have linked to just one UK story, it is a bit old, 2003, but it is relevant because it is from 6 or 7 years after their gun ban. You'd think an island, especially one without a traditional love of guns like the US would be able to have all the guns gone by then, right? Also, if you look halfway down the article there is a reader comment that a way to end gun crime would be to ban all REPLICA guns. Lol!?!

Gun Crime Soars 35% - UK

Gun bans are also not working in Australia...

HALF a billion dollars spent buying back hundreds of thousands of guns after the Port Arthur massacre had no effect on the homicide rate, says a study published in an influential British journal.

The report by two Australian academics, published in the British Journal of Criminology, said statistics gathered in the decade since Port Arthur showed gun deaths had been declining well before 1996 and the buyback of more than 600,000 mainly semi-automatic rifles and pump-action shotguns had made no difference in the rate of decline.

Australia Study

You also dismiss armed resistance too easily. You need to also consider the deterrent effect it has.

The 'insurrectionist theory' label does not do justice to this aspect of the Second Amendment. True, the Second Amendment implicitly authorizes recourse to arms when less drastic means fail to attain or retain the proper ends of government identified in the Declaration. But the Amendment's greater value lies in the deterrent effect it would have, were it respected and enforced to the degree of its companion rights in the Bill of Rights. Although it implicitly authorizes rebellion-and explicitly provides the means of waging rebellion-the Amendment, if observed, should make rebellion less likely by making it less likely to be necessary. The Second Amendment should stand as a reminder to those who govern of the people's ultimate right to preserve or reestablish their rights by arms. One need not prophesy armed struggle by American citizens against their own government to propose that the citizenry's widespread ownership of firearms could safeguard liberty by deterring tyranny. The great value of the right is political, not military. This value lies not in the fact that the Amendment enables armed resistance, but that by enabling armed resistance it should make the conditions which would justify such resistance less likely to occur."


Second Amendment Article on findarticle

Speaking of Ghandi...

Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.

"In this instance of the fire-arms, the Asiatic has been most improperly bracketed with the natives. The British Indian does not need any such restrictions as are imposed by the Bill on the natives regarding the carrying of fire-arms. The prominent race can remain so by preventing the native from arming himself. Is there a slightest vestige of justification for so preventing the British Indian?"

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi