That said, I think the telling example is right there in the U.S.
From
Reuters:
[Kennesaw, Georgia] had little prominence until it passed a gun ordinance in 1982 that required all heads of a household to own a firearm and ammunition.
...
"When the law was passed in 1982 there was a substantial drop in crime ... and we have maintained a really low crime rate since then," said police Lt. Craig Graydon. "We are sure it is one of the lowest (crime) towns in the metro area.
Is this example really that telling ? I haven't done any reasearch on this case, but later in the article it is stated that "When the town's gun law was passed, about 70 percent of households likely owned a gun,..". So roughly 70% of the inhabitants already had a gun, seems not very likely that a raise of 20-27% in gun ownership would have a "substantial" impact (I would be interested in numbers).
But other parts of the article are quite interesting in that matter - like the fact, that there was/is some kind of migration happening from Atlanta, which lead to a decrease in overall gun ownerships. Also ".. proactive policing and close police liaison with community and business groups" seemed to have had also an effect on keeping overall crime rates low altough the population grew a lot.
That still isn't enough to "swipe it from the table", of course, but it seems things are (as always) not that easy to correlate.
To those most likely to commit a violent crime, the criminals who would normally source their weapons on the black market anyway, it raises no barriers whatsoever. Black markets only become stronger where there is an official ban on something, you only need to look to the abolition to see an example of that.
It does however raise a barrier for law abiding citizens. This would clearly seem to tip the balance of power in favour of the criminals as far as I can see, and I just can't see how that could possibly be considered a good thing.
The first problem here is availabilty. Drugs can be produced "easily" (in relation to weapons) in a lab and can be packaged up in a endless varieties (which helps if comes to smuggling and distribution)
Weapons however need a real manufacturing plant, which is hard to hide and a are rather hard to smuggle. Which leads to price increase (the harder it is for a local dealer to get the goods, the higher the price).
But with weapons available at every 10th or 11th corner, getting them is rather easy.
I simply doubt that the average criminial joe that wants to have a gun to do something bad is getting one that has a long way behind it (beeing produced in third world country, smuggled into the country at a great expense of different resources), as this would raise the price heavly. It is far more likely that he will get a gun that was produced locally and was detoured in the blackmarket.
The second problem is that your conclusion seems to based on the assumption that there needs to be a balance of "firepower" in order to keep society not from falling apart. Which is something I can see no evidence of whatsoever, especially as it would also imply that police work seems to have minimal impact on societies stability, if a drop in gun ownership automatically means that "the crimininals" will get the upper hand.
On a side note:
Altough I'm not very into klumpens style of argumentation, nor most of his arguments. I also had the impression of "two factions constantly struggeling to get the upperhand", maybe its a cultural thing
Apologies for the odd quoting style, but the boards editor repeatedly adds quotation closing tags, regardless of how often I delete them
