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Well I think it may be a little more complex than a like for like comparison of numbers, crime is motivated by a wide range of factors from selfish narcissism through rank stupidity to abject poverty and drug addiction. So I’d need to see a lot more evidence for claim 1 than top level stats.
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Again this could have a wide number of contributory factors, that might have been a lot worse if the availability of both legal and illegal guns were not strictly controlled. I think a more reasonable assessment is to compare the effects of such laws across multiple western democracies.
I agree, and of course it is vital that criminality is addressed and fought by widely varied initiatives, and that requires society be at least as ingenious as criminals. this would include fighting factors like poverty, and helping people who are motivated to commit opportunistic crimes, like drug addicts for instance. Hard core criminals who are impervious to any reason to desist from criminality are probably in a minority across the spectrum of crime. all society can do here is be vigilant, and put as much effort into rehabilitation as they put into punishing crime. Societies having the lowest rates of recidivism have learned this, and have lower rates of crime because of it. It’s in our natures to be angered and appalled by crime, but it perhaps handicaps us to a cycle where crime increases when it need not.
Tackling corruption in law enforcement, giving police the tools they need to be as effective as possible, tackling poverty, and social depravation, limiting the availability of lethal weapons as fare as is practical, punishing but reforming people who break the law etc etc etc…