Increase in violent crimes involving guns? My bet is no way.
"Major increases"? Lets see your data and source. No way.
http://www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/ausguns.asp
Yeah, I'm gonna toss wiki into it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_pol...United_Kingdom
http://world.time.com/2012/12/17/whe...and-australia/
If you got one gun death in a town of 1 million people, and, the next year there was 2, is that were your huge increase is coming from? Let's see some "rate per 100k of people" type data. Apples to apples.
Common sense would dictate that if there weren't any guns at all, none, then, there wouldn't be any gun violence. Duh.
Does less mean more? "Lies, damn lies, and statistics."
And, really, Ice, no difference between a 10-22 and an AR15 (and/or clone) in 5.56 and/or .223? You're silly. Wanna buy a bridge? Maybe you'd like to trade for some airsoft items...ha ha.
Crazy stuff.
Unfortunately, folks on the extreme ends of the issue will seem to have more say in the goings on of any legislation rather than the seemingly more rational folks in the middle. Which is how it goes, I suppose...whacky system we got. Oh well...