Gun control advocates argue, however, that the framers could never have imagined the types of guns that are currently available or the sheer amount of devastation one person can cause with them. While there is no way for us to know what the founders would think of our modern day guns, we can look to other countries to see how well strict gun laws work. Per Business Insider:

We might look to other countries to see whether tighter gun laws can be successful. That is the case in Australia, where the government passed the National Firearm Agreement (NFA), a sweeping set of gun regulations, in 1996. According to the most recent data available — from 1996 to 2015 — the annual number of gun-related homicides decreased from 516 to 211.

Before 1996, the country had seen 14 mass shootings, but one particularly horrific spree led to gun reform. In April 1996 — in the worst mass murder in Australia's history — gunman Martin Bryant killed 35 people and injured 24 others at a seaside resort in Port Arthur, Tasmania. Twelve days later, the government instituted the NFA, which includes three main provisions: tight control on semi-automatic and fully automatic weapons; a national registry of firearm owners; and a buyback program so that Australians could sell guns back to the government.

While it's difficult to say whether the NFA directly led to the drop in mass shootings and a reduction in gun-related homicides, experts say we can draw some links.

One of the more recent studies on the subject is by Elena Andreyeva and Benjamin Ukert, two public health researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. Their 2017 working paper suggests the NFA decreased firearm mortality by 60%, including homicides and suicides. Another one of their peer-reviewed studies, published in 2017, came to a similar conclusion.