nuuanusam, 

What is "serious gun control" to your mind?  As I see it, all major and minor U.S. prisons practice "serious gun control" yet I would be the last person on earth to guarantee your physical safety in any of them.  The general inmate populations all live in "gun-free zones" do they not?

But speaking of safety of the general and wider populace, there was absolutely absolute "gun control" in most places on earth circa AD 1000.  Yet, especially if you were born female, would you have regarded living during such times and places as a haven from rape, robbery and other assorted random violence?

I for one do not regard times and places where individual safety can only be had by the wealthy elite or the strong as especially safe or desirable.

People tend to forget (or simply just don't care) that without weapons the weak inevitably prove easy prey to the strong.  Brute force?  You can have it.

There is a saying:  "God created man, but it was Samuel Colt who made them equal."