Re: "there was no increase in violent crime involving firearms."
The stats I've seen suggest there WAS a not insignificant rise in crime involving firearms post the 1997 act - but it's spurious to suggest there was any connection whatsoever.
Handgun owners were extremely law-abiding individuals and compliance with the confiscation was virtually 100%
What happened was that criminals did what criminals always do; they did illegal things with illegal black-market guns. They just did it *more* - for reasons entirely unrelated to Dunblane or the 1997 act.
Americans do sometimes cite this in gun control debates but they often get it wrong; they think there was cause and effect when there was NOT. They don't appreciate that there was no history in living memory of using handguns in self-defence in the UK.
(As for the 1997 act, prime example of an appalling knee-jerk emotion-led piece of legislation; how in hell does it serve anyone to make the bloody Olympic shooting team train overseas?! Disgraceful)
Mike - ex-Brit, now American, gun owner :-)