violent crime has gone up ten fold in the last ten years since the UK and the Aussies voluntarily gave up firearms. That's a fact. Google an old prof of mine....Gary Kleck from Florida State. An armed society is a polite society.
I was arguing the civil liberties aspects of gun ownership and their effect on freedom, but if you want to deflect the debate to the crime aspect you might want to do a little bit more research.
Instead of relying solely on your professor and his stats, I went to the source and looked up the official crime statistics for the UK and Australia. Here are some statistics:
United Kingdom
Reported Violent Crime:
http://www.crimestatistics.org.uk/output/Page66.asp
As for the 'dramatic rise in violent crime' in the UK, it appears to have more to do with a change in the methodology for reporting crimes than in an actual crime increase. It is explained at the bottom of the page and is obvious by the two drastically different numbers for 1998/9, an almost doubling of the reported crime rate.
Want more proof? Here is the British Crime Survey's longer term statistics on violent crime. Crime peaked before the latest restrictions on on gun ownership were passed in 1997, including banning handguns (which only affected 0.1% of the population that owned them) and actually continued declining after 1997.
Violent Crime (British Crime Survey):
http://www.crimestatistics.org.uk/output/Page63.asp
An independent explanation and further data about both stats and methodology:
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs06/crime-statistics-independent-review-06.pdf
Australia
Australia was a little harder to find, but the stats are relatively similar:
Homicide rate has been steady for years, and has actually declined since more restrictive gun laws passed, and the rate is less than half the US's rate:
http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/4C6EF961841B2EA4CA256E7D00002650?Open
"Total personal crime the victimisation prevalence rate increased from 4.8% in 1998 to 5.3% in 2002." [Personal crime includes assault, robbery and sexual assault]
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/productsbyCatalogue/669C5A997EAED891CA2568A900139405/
Still don't believe me, then look at this Snopes page on Australian crime rates:
http://www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/ausguns.asp
So, the stats really don't prove your point there

. What do you think about that?