Elliot, read what I wrote more carefully. I never said that the rate of gun crime went up, I said that the HOMICIDE rate went up, and if you go back and review the statistics at the relevant period, it did.
People are going to kill each other, guns just make it easier. Much like that incident in Japan a few years back, in which a man with I think a butcher knife managed to rack up a higher body count than most of the gun rampages you see in the US.
Ultimately, there are two types of societies that see low rates of gun crime. Ones in which nobody has a gun, and ones in which EVERYONE has a gun, and carries it with them. The ones like the US, in which there are lots of guns but nobody usually has one on them, tend to see high rates of gun crime because, well, the few people who DO carry guns can generally assume that their victims are unarmed.
The problem is that what worked to reduce gun crime in Australia, ie the rounding up and destruction of all multi-shot firearms, wouldn't work in the US. First, we have too many, and second, a significant portion of those are held by a criminal element, who wouldn't want to give them up. That and the Second Amendment thing that's honestly overused by the average gun nut.
As for the rationale behind the 2nd Amendment, that remains a topic of some debate. One interpretation, and honest given the way the rest of the document is written I suspect it's correct, is that it has very little to do with a fear of the British or foreign invaders coming back, and a great deal to do with a fear that at some point the federal government might slip into tyranny.
