There needs to be a more broad-minded discussion about what guns are, what they represent. Right now we are saturated with the left-wing idea that there is no possible reason for guns besides sowing destruction and murder. This is an emotional response to a traumatic event rather than an objective look at a complex past of American society. Neither are guns just about defending yourself or arming yourself in a rebellion. There is more emphasis on individual empowerment in American culture, more of a concentration on what the individual is entitled to do. A gun is the ability to take someone else's life. Having a gun is having the power to be an equal player in a society where other people might be a danger to you, like a check/balance to other citizens on a societal scale. Any sort of complete gun control means that we no longer trust the individual with the power to end someone else's life. That would be a major, permanent change to American culture.
However, I think we already stopped trusting the individual to a large extent, it just hasn't been made unanimous or coded in law and the culture.
Again, my opinion is that we should make it as hard to get a gun as it is to legally change your gender. I'm for tighter gun regulation, but not a total illegalization.