I can't agree on the guns argument. I shoot, and the legislation that has been passed by knee-jerk in the UK is major pain in the arse.
And there's no sign that gun-related crime is falling - if anything it's got worse because so many people offloaded/sold/"mislaid" firearms when the '88 Firearms Act was coming in.
OK, no-one in the UK has a need for a semi-automatic rifle or carbine, but plenty of people I know used to use semi-auto shotguns for pigeon clearance and the like. Yet the anti-gun lobby tends to blanket everything together and shout "ban them". Pistol-shooting, too, had plenty of legitimate adherents in the UK until the ban. Yes, pistols are designed to shoot people, but so are swords, yet fencing isn't crippled by absurd legislation. The key is responsible ownership (Hamilton in Dunblane should never have been certificated, and the police bear a heavy responsibility for letting him have his guns legally with his record)
A bit like drugs, really. I'm all for legalising cannabis, the drying of psilocybin, peyotl, mescalin and other Class B drugs - if only because it would take their sale and distribution out of the hands of the crooks - but I'd draw the line at PCP, cocaine, opiates and synthesised LSD.