I owned guns (at least one, usually several) from the age of 14 until I moved to Australia two years ago. As most of you know, Australia is the Holy Land of Gun Control: after the Port Arthur mass shooting, the government rounded up 1/3 of all the firearms in the country and melted them down.
The gun buy-back was tremendously expensive and far from unanimously popular; there is still a pro-gun political party here.
So, what is the result 17 years later? For an American's perspective, see below:
1. No more mass shootings.
2. Gun violence is so low, the papers write about knife crime.
3. I know just as many people here who own guns as I did in the USA.
There are differences: the people here own shotguns and hunting rifles, not handguns, assault rifles, or sub-machine guns. The owners here are farmers or hunters or friends of farmers and hunters (farmer being a pretty loose definition, as I know several engineers who also have farms) There's paperwork for all of it, and the cops are allowed to inspect your gun safe at any time. You can get handguns, but the paperwork is worse. And of course guns cost a lot more (at least 2x).
I don't have a gun, because I don't want to do the paperwork. But that is the only thing stopping me: if I wanted to replace my arsenal, I could (except for the Mini-14, but hey...)
But of course that leads to another difference: here, in Australia, I don't feel the need to have a gun in the house.
The point is, it is perfectly possible to have strong gun control laws and still have sport shooting and hunting. It's not even a big deal, really. Yes it is an expensive hassle compared to just showing up at a gun show and buying some cool stuff, but let's be honest: opening the newspaper to something like Sandy Hook ruins your day a lot worse than shelling out some bucks and standing in line for a while at the police station.