Let's fill in the gaps in punky's argument.
He posits that areas of the US with looser gun laws (what are these, btw, concealed firearms?) have lower figures for gun crime, and I'm willing to go along with that, it seems logical*. However, we should compare the result of loose gun laws with the current situation of extremely tight gun laws in the UK before shouting hallelujah and investing in a .45 or two.
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Gun crime has gone up year after year since Dunblane
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It's worth remembering that, globally, we have an absolutely miniscule gun control problem and a tiny number of gun deaths a year. I do not think this is unrelated to having some of the toughest laws around.
England and Wales usually has <100 gun murders a year (there are far more suicides, for instance, and of course the odd unfortunate accident), the last figure I can find is 80 in 2003 - this translates to .13 per 100,000 people.
The US, of course, has over five times the population and about 40 times the death rate, but this is so far in advance of any other civilised country (I'm assuming for the sake of argument that the US is still civilised, although I have my doubts, and I'm definitely excluding Russia).
I'm perfectly willing to accept what appears obvious, that the US's appalling gun problem is cultural as well as legal and banning guns wouldn't really help much, it's much much deeper and probably related to all the other deep, serious structural issues in that incredible country.
In fact nearly everywhere you might consider a nice place to live (Spain, Germany, France, Italy) has more gun murders per unit of population than England and Wales, with the notable exception of Japan, which has, er, draconian gun control laws.
Canada, pre-the recent tightening, is about 4 times higher than England and Wales.
And results in far more murders and is rising at a far greater rate. I'm not sure that looser gun laws would necessarily reduce this.
As for the idea that banning something drives it underground, perfectly true, witness Prohibition and current drug laws. Legalising something, however, certainly makes more people use it and brings the price down. I fail to see what we gain by having more people using cheaper firearms, which after all have precisely one purpose. The point of the legalisation argument for, say, cannabis or whisky is that it's fairly harmless, or no more harmful than a cigarette. No way is a gun remotely harmless.
Given the choice between waiting for less stupid humans to evolve and banning guns, I'd ban guns - it clearly works and is actually feasible. If you want to reduce Britain's gun crime, legalise crack cocaine, since the illegal trade in that commodity appears to be pretty much responsible for the recent increase.
Incidentally, Canada has recently tightened up its gun control laws.
http://www.guncontrol.ca/Content/GunControlLaws.html
* because they're in the South and away from the east/west coast urban centres where most shootings are, it's an incredibly localised problem in the US.