As someone who has lived in areas of the US on both ends of the gun culture spectrum (by US standards), I could not be more convinced that what we need is more guns, not less. That being said I acknowledge that there are many people who are very ignorant about firearm safety as well as those who want firearms to harm others. The solution to the first is education, which can then lead to the solution to the second, which is arming as many citizens as possible.
When I lived in the Pacific Northwest, where things are admittedly a little more... colorful, gun owners were in the majority and while violent crime still happened, it was well below the national average. That being said my homeland also has a way of attracting people who are out of their minds, which led to a comparatively high number of mass shooting attempts. The thing is that these attempts were stopped by either armed citizens or local law enforcement.
However, when I lived in Western New York, where gun laws are not as restrictive as NYC but still much more restrictive than most of the nation, homicide was literally a daily occurrence. Not as many blatantly insane criminals, but far more mundane ones that you had to worry about in daily life. Additionally far fewer cops were part of the gun culture and they were generally not very aggressive in combating crime.
Now obviously there are other factors such as local economics, but it's just common sense that (comparatively) sane criminals will be a lot more aggressive if most of the population isn't armed than if more are armed than not. And those that are mentally ill will pretty much do what they damn well feel like, so the rest of us may as well be prepared to deal with that.
But glad to be back. 
