WONDERFUL! This is what happened when Australia introduced tight gun controls
6/19/15
...But can something be done? Australia, a country that in some ways shares the United States' frontier mentality and history as part of the British empire, implemented sweeping gun-control measures that have been successful for nearly two decades. So, theoretically it's possible, but "the power to do something about it" in the U.S. is limited by factors that are deeply rooted in its culture and baked into its founding document.
...What happened in Australia? Gun violence was bad. A decade of gun massacres had seen more than 100 people shot dead. The last straw was an incident at a popular tourist spot at Port Arthur, Tasmania, in April 1996, when a lone gunman killed 20 people with his first 29 bullets, all in the space of 90 seconds. This "pathetic social misfit," to quote the judge in the case, achieved his final toll of 35 people dead and 18 seriously wounded by firing a military-style semiautomatic rifle.
What happened next? Only 12 days after the shootings, in John Howard's first major act of leadership and by far the most popular in his first year as Prime Minister, his government announced nationwide gun law reform.
Uniform legislation agreed to by all states and territories -- the national government has no control over gun ownership or use -- specifically addressed mass shootings: Rapid-fire rifles and shotguns were banned, gun owner licensing was tightened and remaining firearms were registered to uniform national standards.
How did Australia do it? In two nationwide, federally funded gun buybacks, plus large-scale voluntary surrenders and state gun amnesties both before and after Port Arthur, Australia collected and destroyed more than a million firearms, perhaps a third of the national stock, according to Professor Philip Alpers of the University of Sydney, who is editor of gunpolicy.org. No other nation had attempted anything on this scale. The national government also banned the importation of new automatic and semiautomatic weapons. And the buyback was paid for by a special one-off tax on all Australians.
What was the political fallout? It wasn't without cost to John Howard. Political interest groups among his conservative base raised hell, and the move met strong resistance from some in rural areas. His party's coalition partner in those areas suffered in subsequent elections. But the majority of Australians, shocked by the mass killing, backed action. And it worked...
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/19/world/us-australia-gun-control/
^^^^ This is what we should have done after Newtown/Sandy Hook. It BLOWS MY MIND nothing changed after those sweet, precious toddlers were gunned down in a closet.
(Repost from a reply on another thread. I think its extremely relevant & should be read by as many of us Americans as possible. Please spread the word. It's possible!!!!)
PS~
In the years after the Port Arthur massacre, the risk of dying by gunshot in Australia fell by more than 50% -- and stayed there. A 2012 study by Andrew Leigh of Australian National University and Christine Neill of Wilfrid Laurier University also found the buyback led to a drop in firearm suicide rates of almost 80% in the following decade.
In the 19 years since the announcement of legislation specifically designed to reduce gun massacres, Australia has seen no mass shootings. As Howard wrote in an opinion piece for the New York Times in 2013, "Today, there is a wide consensus that our 1996 reforms not only reduced the gun-related homicide rate, but also the suicide rate."
= new reply since forum marked as read
Yes yes....
Bernie Sanders IS the face of state rights on guns..... or something..... 
Whenever I hear about a mass shooting of innocents.... I think "Bernie Sander!" 1st.... then maybe the NRA or Rick Perry or someone like that.
reeks of desperation.
But it dawned on me, doing chores this am, that if it took hold late in the game, it could really backfire on you in the general election. 
carry on...
So give it a rest already. Sheesh.
rights.
And he also didn't -- and doesn't -- believe that gun control alone will solve the problem of a violent culture.
Of course, his more sophisticated and complex view of our sick culture doesn't fit into a nice soundbite. So continue trying to mischaracterize his views. Smacks of desparation, but carry on.
Madokie!!
How many ways can I say this? It's a gawd-given right. 
Response to Damansarajaya (Reply #50)
and thus not always rational. You probably have no fear if you see a policeman/woman with an openly carried gun in Canada, because you have an expectation that goes with seeing the uniform. If you saw the back of a civilian with a gun on their hip you might feel one thing, and then feel another if they turned around and you saw they had a prominent police badge around their neck or hanging off a suit pocket. The person was no different before or after, it was just your feelings that had changed.
And your feelings and expectations might not be the same as those of a black man in Ferguson, Missouri has when he sees a policeman. I do not see open civilian carry that much where I live, but I have seen it and it does not bother me.
Other countries with tighter gun control than the US allow civilian carry (like the Czech Republic), and this:
was taken at the Apple Store in Geneva, Switzerland, where no one batted an eye at it. The young man in question is a Swiss reservist, probably on his way back from maneuvers. It is a regular occurrence to see someone on a bus or train with a "huge gun on their back" while in civilian clothing, and so they have different expectations than you would. And lest anyone try to mislead to you to the contrary, that young man does have magazines for the weapon and is allowed to buy ammunition for it at any gun store with no limits (it is not easy to directly confirm this unless you read the laws in the original language, but an English translation of the Swiss legal code is here).
As to how many women who have the right to carry actually save themselves, I don't know and am not sure anyone has broken it down that specifically. According to our Bureau of Justice Statistics, there are about 11 million concealed carry permits distributed among an adult population of about 200 million. Our Center for Disease Control estimates that defensive gun use is at least as common as criminal gun use, and if you accept that figure (a lot here at DU do not) it would mean there are about 800 instances each day in which a person uses a gun or threatens to use a gun as a self-defense measure (this is among all gun owners, not just concealed carry permit holders). I do not feel confident trying to detail it more than that, but it gives you a rough feel for the numbers.
Because every state that has a concealed carry permit system does criminal background checks on the applicant, such people are pre-selected to be less likely to be the ones you should worry about, and this is borne out in statistics, with concealed carry gun owners being less likely to commit a gun crime than average. I do not have any corresponding figures for open carry because many of the states that allow it do not require a permit to do so.
Last, I am a gun rights supporter, but even so I would like to clarify your opening statement. Having a gun and being able to use it would not have saved her. It might have saved her. I think that she should have had a choice, and that not having that choice decreased her chance to survive. But simply owning or carrying a gun, even if you are trained with it, is no guarantee it will save you. It is a last resort that you hope you never have to use, and you act intelligently so that you decrease the chances you will ever need to use that last resort.