Czechia and Switzerland have almost the same gun-ownership levels as the US. Switzerland actually has the well-regulated citizens' militia that the 2nd Amendment intended. And way less gun-crime.

The problem is:
Guns are something completely ordinairy in the US. A tool with the specific purpose to kill people and it's treated like an everyday-appliance.
Guns are a part of everyday-life in the US.
The presence of guns, the training with guns, the use of guns. Perfectly normal.

"You are irrate and angry? Grab your gun. There's nothing special about grabbing your gun. Why would you stop to think what you are doing when you are going for your gun? It's perfectly normal to use a gun! Everybody is using guns!"

That's actually the means by which Japan brought its firearms ownership down (from roughly on-par with the current per-cap rate in the US in the early 1970s) to its current effective ban 44 years later...it's not illegal to buy a gun in Japan, it's just impossible to do so through the proscribed course of doing so...and illegal possession or purchase of a gun or ammunition is severely punished.

So, net result, Japan has a gun ban without ever passing a gun ban. They just passed a strong set of legal restrictions and an impossibly onerous process to purchase a firearm. Pretty much, to own a firearm in Japan, you have to have owned one before the legal change (which would make you about 70 now), live in a rural prefecture, have a provable need to own a gun and then are restricted on the kinds of guns you can own. (low caliber, low capacity long guns. Good for hunting and for chasing wildlife away from your chickens and not much else.) Oh and they cannot be inherited unless the inheritee has them rendered non-functional permanently or themselves qualifies to own a gun. (One of the things they did was require national registry then never actually establish a registry agent--so you can't get registered.)

The total number of legal firearms in Japan today: less than 2000.
Expected total number of legal firearms in Japan by 2030: approximately 0
Approximate guess on the number of illegal firearms in Japan today: ~300, the majority of which are assumed to be unintentionally illegal.

Even the yakuza favor wooden sticks...carrying a gun is an effective life sentence, beating someone nearly to death with a stick gets you about 10 years. Actually beating someone to death with a stick gets you around 20.

One of the things they did was require national registry then never actually establish a registry agent

That was DC's trick with handguns for years, before Heller.

I actually love the idea of national registry, at least as a start.