If laws are ineffective at preventing crime...why have any laws at all? Legalize drunk-driving, abolish age restrictions on alcohol purchase,legalize drugs etc. Ludicrous.
The crime rate in Montreal escalated rapidly within an hour of the Montreal police going on strike in 1969. Police enforce laws...just as they do here against illegal guns.
Re 'Gun Facts 4.1'. This, as it pertains to Australia, is simply a collection of lies. Handguns have always been rare in Australian history and it has for 80+ years been extremely difficult to have one legally. Ownership of a handgun for personal protection was even more difficult. The only non-security officer I've ever heard of having a pistol permit for self-defence was a jeweller who frequently (so he claimed) carried large quantities of jewellery. His permit was revoked after his girlfriend tried to shoot him with it after a drunken domestic dispute. She missed him from a range of around 5 -10m. Most of the guns in Australia were not banned...they were restricted according to need. I would have no trouble buying one legally if I could demonstrate a need and complied with the law.
Anyone claiming to use a gun to kill in self-defence would most likely face a manslaughter charge, like the female security guard who was recently bashed quite savagely in the commission of a robbery. After she had been bashed she drew her pistol and killed the robber who was attemptig to flee. She was eventually acquitted,on the grounds of diminished responsibility...not self-defence. Her lawyers never pleaded self-defence since it would have resulted in a murder conviction and it was clearly impossible to plead self-defence when the robber was fleeing the scene and was shot from behind.
The crime statistics quoted in 'Gun Facts 4.1' bear no relation to the figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, whose Director, as I previously stated, has publicly refuted many times the misuse of raw figures and deliberate lies disseminated in the infomercial aired by the NRA and shown here on a few current affairs shows which also debunked the lies of the NRA, who obviously never guessed that it would receive an airing here.
The actual figures show a fall in homicide,violent crimes and sexual assault and the previous rise was due to a change in classification,with such offences as 'Resist Police' and domestic violence being re-classified and a standardized method of collecting data across 9 police forces.
Read the actual figures for yourself...instead of the utter ******** being spread by the NRA.
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/facts/2005/01_recordedCrime.html
Recorded crime (in: Australian crime : facts and figures 2005) [Publication]