96% of all gun related crimes are committed with illegally obtained weapons and you think taking guns away from law bidding citizens and police is a good idea?

I think if private security, and privatized military contractors, and other such private entities are allowed legal access to the arms and armor of their choice, than so should the rest of civilian population.

If you want to stop people having access to unnecessary weapons, then perhaps weapons production should also not be in private hands relatively free to sell those to anyone anywhere in the world.

What about the rest of the world that will not stop producing and selling weapons even if the US does stop.

Lastly, whats to stop people from filling the niche of senseless violence with home made variety of weapons and have lot more explosives instead of guns in the streets.

Long story short, you cant stop violence, you can only remove the need for violence by building happy and healthy society and even that not 100% successfully.

If you take out gang and drug related incidence, the statistics are virtually identical

Sorry, i was a bit vague just then

well, the UK's perfectly safe with restrictive gun laws and also, ordinary police don't carry guns while patrolling. Only specialist forces (eg MI6) and the army are allowed to carry guns with them. You're far more likely to get stabbed than shot in the UK anyway. But,my grandad, had a revolver and a rifle, as he was a part of a hunting club, and he kept them at home until he went to that club. you shouldn't be allowed to keep a gun in your pocket, wherever you go.

Also, I meant the army and specialist forces should be the only groups able to carry guns with them. Citizens, should be able to get guns from gun shops, like in Britain, although it should be made difficult to purchase them. Not impossible though, basic criminal checks should be there.     

Even if we were to somehow pass a nationwide law to make guns illegal, which won't happen, it would take decades before enough guns were removed from circulation to make any appreciable difference.  Do we really need a war on guns?  Look at how deadly the war on drugs has been.  I can't imagine weapons trafficking would be any better.

How can you tell?

And besides, there are gangs and drugs in Canada too. It's simply that gangs aren't all that impressive without guns. And that's because it's illegal.

check out how great it has been over here in chicago since guns have been bann'd, only 500+ murders a year :-|

if anything this shows more people need to carry weapons

Ok, but that doesn't explain why crime rates seem to go down when such laws are struck down as unconstitutional.

Gang crime is relatively new to Canada, primarily because we didn't build the moronic housing projects that were built in major US centers in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.

The firearm related homicides in the United States are (mostly) centered around major US centers where between 75% and 90% of their murders are gun related or gang related. If you compare these cities to Canadian cities of similar size, and remove drug and gang related violence in both cities, the statistics become remarkably similar.

Even with our "tougher" gun laws, and gangs have moved out of Detroit (and similar North Eastern cities) into Toronto the number of murders using handguns has began to increase rapidly. Gangs and drugs are the problems, not the Redneck who wants to show off his AK-47 at the shooting range.

That's more or less been the correlation shown whenever areas inact gun reform.