You mean the "legal" gun owners don't you. There are illegal gun owners (even there) and if you believe their numbers aren't going to increase, well, we'll see in a few years.
The only people who are saying this to us are gunowners. Somehow their reasoning escapes us....how can unlicencing guns somehow make this any less of an issue ? How can it somehow stop those who shouldn't have access to a gun from acquiring one ?
If the criminals are gaining access to guns, they're getting them from somewhere.
Gun owning advocates need to see the wider picture and accept that even folks like me, who genuinely aren't anti gun ownership, aren't being convinced to remove the restrictions and licences.
They have no chance until they get rid of their anger and start rationally working to educate and to help encourage confidence by reporting those unlicenced guns that they all somehow seem to know are out there.....in growing numbers so they claim.
Yet gun crime rates are apparantly falling since licencing and restrictions took effect. Despite that after the widely reported incidents in Cumbria, etc., it was decided that heavier penalties would be applied to those who broke the law, and that licencing would be tightened up.
http://www.politics.co.uk/reference/gun-crime
There's the elephant in the room though; we can't discuss this without bringing in the politics of the situation.
Our lawmakers are politicians and the OP says we have strange laws
I'm off to bed; I'll report my post so that another Mod who hasn't been involved in the conversation can have a looksee.
atb,
M