I'm convinced the town I work in is full of crazy people.

[kandrathe]

No it is about the fact that normal people will have access to weapons. As I explained before the result of normal people having guns will be that petty criminals will also start carrying guns everywhere.

I must admit this makes little sense to me.

You think that criminals (sociopaths) don't arm themselves now because they know everyone is disarmed. And, if guns were available, then you believe criminals would arm themselves because they would assume their prey were armed.

So, I researched the Netherlands a bit more. It is not too difficult to get a gun if you want to get one. It seems to be a bit of a pain for legal gun owners to have the police visit you once a year to inspect your gun safe. But, you still do have gun crimes, but not as much as some other European nations many who have stricter gun laws. Similar to where I live, gun crime is more prevalent in urban poverty stricken areas.

Of interest -- Harvard Law Review; WOULD BANNING FIREARMS REDUCE MURDER AND SUICIDE? by DON B. KATES AND GARY MAUSER

"These statistics reinforce the point that murder rates are determined by basic socio‐cultural and economic factors rather than mere availability of some particular form of weaponry. Consider Norway and its neighbors Sweden, the Netherlands, and Denmark. Norway has far and away Western Europe’s highest household gun ownership rate (32%), but also its lowest murder rate. The Netherlands has the lowest gun ownership rate in Western Europe (1.9%), and Sweden lies midway between (15.1%) the Netherlands and Norway. Yet the Dutch gun murder rate is higher than the Norwegian, and the Swedish rate is even higher, though only slightly.137" -- from page 687

I would conclude that your experience with gun crime has more to do with the Dutch culture, and less to do with your access to weapons.