Here’s England’s experience, in a pithy summary from the London Telegraph:
We have, post-Dunblane, what are said to be the toughest gun control laws in the world. They have actually proved strikingly ineffectual.
Gun crime has doubled since they were introduced. Young hoodlums are able to acquire handguns - either replica weapons that have been converted, or imports from eastern Europe - with ease. With no dedicated frontier police, our borders remain hopelessly porous. The only people currently incommoded by the firearms laws are legitimate holders of shotgun licenses, who are subjected to the most onerous police checks.
This pretty much matches the NRA’s predictive slogan:
When guns are outlawed, only outlaws have guns.
The left in the U.S. never ceases its attempts — sometimes successful — to whittle away at the rights of Americans to own firearms. With the Democratic majorities now in Congress, we can expect more of the same at the national level — hopefully to be vetoed by President Bush. In 2008, should Hillary or Obama be elected (an outcome you can bet that Osama and his ilk are fervently praying for), and should the Democratic majorities in Congress be maintained, we can expect some very restrictive gun control legislation to be passed. Both candidates have, in the past, expressed support for either eliminating the right of U.S. citizens to own firearms, or for restricting that right severely, as in the U.K. today. In fact, Hillary has cited the U.K. as a model for gun control. Should such legislation be passed, the NRA and other such groups will immediately mount a Constitutional challenge, and one hopes they’d win that. But after Kelo, I’m no longer so confident that our Supreme Court will actually uphold the plain meaning of the Constitution. Event its “conservative” members are alarmingly prone to inventing new meanings and new passages…
