Tougher gun laws DON'T stop gun violence.
Living in the UK, where access to firearms is far more limited by law, it doesn't stop the shootings of innocent people. Certain places are a fucking source for jokes and area-based put-downs of some of the shittier places regionally local here. They call nottingham 'shottingham', manchester 'gunchester' for example. And salford is rife with gangbanger-comitted shootings, both executions and punishment shootings, kneecappings etc.
The criminal underworld doesn't give a flying fuck about the law to begin with, and as such have no qualms possessing illegal firearms and using them when the underworld shit hits the fan. (more than) enough killings of that sort. Yet how often do you hear about say, a farmer who owns a shotgun killing somebody? I can think of only the tony martin case, where he got arrested and originally convicted of murder, after being repeatedly burgled (and surprise surprise, from the sound of it the pork didn't do much to help HIM), and then from the sound of it, he finally had enough when two thugs broke into his house, and he shot both, hitting one non-fatally, and one badly enough he died at the scene.)
Bloody clusterfuck of a case, with the surviving burglar attempting to sue for compensation.
Personally I think if people go breaking and entering and meet the business end of a baseball bat, get themselves capped or stabbed by a homeowner defending their property or bodily safety then they have only themselves to blame. And christ, your a dumb cunt if you go breaking into a farmer's place, where there are quite probably vicious dogs and someone pretty likely to have a shotgun.
He'd obviously not kept it prepared with the intent to kill an intruder, since he was using a birdshot loadout, rather than buckshot or solid slugs, flechettes etc. and IMO the fuckers got what they deserved. Technically this specific farmer legally hadn't the right to pack a shotgun, and the model (higher capacity magazine pump action) was illegal here. But still, plenty farmers do have one legally, and the situation could have happened to any one of them)
And IMO the higher mag capacity illegal shotgun doesn't really make any difference to the right or wrong of things. He could still have killed them both with a double-barreled shotgun without having to reload.
But you don't hear of farmers with guns just as capable of killing people as an illegal handgun going on the rampage and slaughtering people. Only ever prosecutions for defending their own property where an intruder is shot. Thats a lot different of a motivation to a gangland shooter, or a jihadist. The vast majority of people don't WANT to engage in that kind of activity. Most people are decent people, at least in as far as not going on murder sprees goes, and decent people don't DO that kind of thing, precisely because they ARE decent human beings.
So I don't see the point of gun control here as it is. It leaves those who abide by the law defenseless against attack by those who do not. The crooks don't seem to have a problem getting hold of handguns. Plenty mass-produced eastern european firearms and converted blank-firers around.
Put it this way, if you make firearms criminal, then only the criminals will have firearms. The crims don't give a damn about misusing them to begin with, whereas the vast majority of gun owners have no desire to shoot people.
And you can't stop the odd out-of-the-blue psycho, the kind of nutball that just flips a switch, tools up with whatever is available and goes on a killing spree. Take the guns away, and it still happens. You get a knife-armed spree killer in a school and there is always going to be sufficient time for them to inflict significant casualties.
IMO if there is more of a chance of otherwise law-abiding or at least nonviolent people packing then that should serve as a factor to discourage random gun violence such as robberies and gangland killings. Such people are likely to think twice before taking on a target who is able to return fire.
I don't see it lessening the likelihood of fanatic type attackers initiating an attack, not if the attacker is warped by ideology and prepared (or fully intending to) die for their beliefs. But at least there would be the possibility that somewhere in say, a targeted building will be armed and able to take out a few koran-bashers, or in the case of a lone-wolf type attack, put a stop to it entirely before a marksman/SWAT team can get to the scene.
