If this has already been covered, forgive me. I didn't have the patience to wade through all the stuff on the previous pages.
First, some background, I grew up in the Canadian bush, and everyone had guns, lots of them. My family was on the low end of the scale, 12 gauge shotgun, pump action 22, bolt action 22, bolt action 243, bolt action 308, and a 22 long barrel revolver. Reloading equipment for the centrefires, and lots of rimfire ammo stored of course. During my whole time growing up I remember only two gunfire incidents.
One was some drunk hunters from "outside" who were trying to shoot a moose. Our cabin was downrange from the moose, so there were bullets whizzing by, and my old man let a couple of rounds go over their heads. They left.
The other was a party, where a young fellow newly arrived from Colorado got tanked up and shot up a guy's pickup with a 460 Weatherby.
These things happened in area 150 miles from the nearest police presence.
These guys here:
http://www.guncontrol.ca/Content/Cda-US.htm
are trying to prove that more guns =more gun deaths. They are quite right, if people want to kill each other and a gun is handy, that's what they'll use.
But, that's not what I see as interesting in their numbers. What I see is that it's an American thing. Canadians just aren't as inclined to kill each other as Americans are. It's got f**k all to do with guns, it's cultural.
I mean, by rights we Canadians should be doing each other in all the time, we have less police, no death penalty, and light sentences, but we don't:
http://www.answers.com/topic/crime-in-canada
In my opinion you could give every Canadian an assault rifle and it would do little to the murder rate. Yes, the gun death rate would go up, but the number of people being killed with bare hands, knives, and so on, would go down.
I also find it interesting that one of the poorest areas of my country (Newfoundland) has the lowest crime rate.
So, I don't own any guns at the moment, (no current need) and I have little opinion about gun laws, other than to state that criminals will have guns, no matter how hard you make them to get for Joe AverageCitizen.
However I believe that you could confiscate every privately owned firearm in the USA and they would still have a high murder rate and high violent crime rate. It's an American thing.