Legalization itself doesn’t do much. What mainly reduces crime is regulations. And just by legalizing something, you’re applying existing regulations to it.

Legalizing drugs means that someone selling drugs now counts as a legal vendor and needs to play by the same rules. Legalizing sex work means that brothels need to apply labor laws. Minimum wages and all that stuff.

Guns aren’t going away, whether they’re legal or not. But when guns are legal to sell, you can require licenses, background checks, and other requirements which wouldn’t exist if it was illegal. Maybe you even want gun ownership to be in some kind of database so you have a better idea whom to suspect when gun crime happens. You don’t get that when guns are illegal.

So in my opinion, getting rid of guns isn’t a solution. It’ll just make the problem more invisible. You should instead strengthen your regulations regarding guns. And teach people some discipline with them. I hear too many stories about third parties acquiring guns that are just lying around loaded, or children and dogs accidentally killing people by discharging the gun. How can someone just get guns into a school building? You guys need to address those issues, not ownership itself. Banning guns is a panic button, not a solution. It means you’re giving up and shoving the problem under the rug.

My country also has high gun ownership, yet we don’t share your problems in that regard. So clearly legal gun ownership isn’t the issue. It’s about gun culture, discipline, and regulation. All of which can be addressed without banning guns. But they have to be addressed, the US needs to change things from the status quo.