I'm not really concerned about the outcome of whether the populace is armed or unarmed.
It's more about process than outcomes. For me, as a natural-rights liberal, it comes down to the presumption of liberty.
I took only one political science course in university, a comparative study of North American politic systems, and one course in law and ethics. A few things from those courses have stuck with me. One of which, was the theory that Canadian laws and much of the overall mindset of our citizens tend to based on the notion that individual rights are really important, but they're forfeit in favour of the greater good of society. To quote Mr. Spock, "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one." For Americans, however, individual liberties are given the utmost priority, although I guess some would say that 9/11 made that less true with regards to matters of security.
This simple alleged difference is in my mind whenever I observe and try to account for differences in American and Canadian attitudes, and I'll be damned if it doesn't seem to hold true more often than not. Your remarks above seem to be yet another example. I don't know if stricter gun laws would make for a safer society, but you've outright said that you don't care, people shouldn't have to compromise their right to bear arms even if it would have an overall positive effect. I found your arguments to be more compelling when they were based on the premise that safety wouldn't be improved if law abiding citizens didn't have easy access to guns. This new angle just sounds petulant to me. [/my $0.02]