Ger, read your history, success at 100% arms control, (except for the followers of the regime of course) has preceeded totalitarianism 100% of the time, genocide often follows. It goes back millennia to feudal Japan, China, Mongolia, Rome, Europe... Look to recent history at places like Soviet Russia, Germany, China, North Korea, (or the euphemistically named Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea), Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia... And I'm willing to bet a paycheque that the citizens of these countries also were adamant it would never happen to them.
People see these things coming but there's a momentum effect and it's like a wave of that you can't stop. Also in most of those examples people didn't have arms because they couldn't afford them, being largely made up of peasants.
That said, there is something to completely disarming a population; following the Bolshevik takeover in Russia, one of their many undemocratic acts was to disarm the population in their dissolution of the Soviets, thus eliminating the population's ability to threaten power.
There is something to be said for one's ability to arm oneself as a deterrent to oppression, the logic being that a regime is less likely to have its army go around terrorizing the population is the population is armed. But in a country like Canada for instance, there are a lot of governmental barriers that exist to what you're talking about--those barriers didn't exist back then, or even in the German republic for that matter.
I mean, it seems blatantly obvious.....if someone decides to kill someone, and they have available a kitchen knife, a can of gasoline and a match, a baseball bat, a golf club, my car, a cast iron frying pan, a rock, a sword, and a 12 gauge shotgun.........one will generally use the 12 gauge shotgun. Now....to be justified in your claim that the restriction of the availability of the shotgun will stop killing, you need to demonstrate that one won't simply complete the act with one of the other tools available.....
And that is a very difficult task.......considering most of Canada's murders are committed without guns......
If we're talking basic common sense, then would it not be just as acceptable to say that the fact that most of Canada's murders have been committed without guns suggests that the reason is limitations on said guns?
Afaik, majority of gun crimes crimes committed in the US involve handguns, followed by other, slightly more sophisticated but just as easily wield-able single-hand operated weapons (e.g. machine pistols--uszis--and things like sawed-off shotguns). These are usually the primary targets of gun control.
Basically it's very difficult to justify owning anything more sophisticated than a bolt-action rifle to say nothing of a fully automatic weapon. As far as self-defence at close range goes, none-lethal systems are probably just as effective, without the nasty side-effects of accidentally killing someone, or yourself for that matter.
(It should be noted that a skilled marksman with even your most basic hunting rifle potentially poses a major threat to society, as the accuracy and range of the weapon allow the user to create many victims over a very short period of time with virtual impunity. Hence the reason for the mass panic and extremely heavy police response on the rare occasions where that has happened (mostly in the US...big surprise). Fortunately it doesn't happen often because, I would guess, that people who can effectively operate these weapons tend to generally be of sound mind--as far as criminal behaviour is concerned at least.)
More to the point, the cause of most gun crime is the same as most crime in general: poverty. Eliminate poverty and you eliminate the reason for needing gun control.
