There's also a shitload of cultural and geographic factors that contribute to our respective rates. Europe in many ways isn't the shining beacon of enlightenment you seem to think it is.
On a philosophical note, I fail to see why my right to defend myself should be taken away by criminals; because that's all strict gun control is. Criminals scaring easily frightened people into surrendering to others with power. So many western people have such an entitlement personality they lack the will to even reasonably take care of themselves. A disarmed society is a weak society. It is a society that admits that the average citizen is so thug-like, so untrustworthy, so lacking in common sense and resourcefulness that they are more a danger to good people than bad when in possession of a firearm. That weakness disgusts me.
I and many gun owners like me are no different when carrying than when not. I carry a gun like I carry my wallet (where legal). Most times I don't even think about it. But if I open-carried, plenty of people would judge me as a threat regardless. That shouldn't be the case.
I'll end with a tired old quote: They who give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin
Gun control started in two primary ways, that I know of, in history. The pistol became a very controlled weapon after it was used by assassins to kill nobility in Europe. Any person willing to die for his cause could shoot a noble before his guards could stop him, and this scared the nobility. A rifle at that time could not shoot accurately at any decent range, and it could not be hidden to get into range due to its size. Swords or other weapons required fighting through guards, and very few assassins would have the skills required. They restricted the weapon to protect themselves from those they deemed inferior. English law from the revolutionary period demonstrates this, protestants were guaranteed the right to arms, because they were considered a trusted group, but only they had that right. Strangely, as the discrimination has been removed, they did not grant the freedoms to non-protestants, but took them from the protestants to restrict everyone equally.
In America, the gun control movement started to take away the guns from Freedmen. The Black man was seen as not-trustworthy, and inherently prone to evil acts. The southern states considered them to be less human, and thus passed many laws to take away their rights. To protect themselves, the states passed laws that made it illegal for blacks to own weapons. (A strange irony considering the recent 14th ruling) One of the primary reasons for passing the 14th amendment was to protect the Freedmen's right to bear arms in defense of their family because white militias were literally roving the countryside killing them in their homes. One of the first cases tried under the 14th involved a white state militia disarming a band of freedmen, who had surrendered, and executing them. The court determined that the black people did not have a right to bear arms that was protected by the 14th, thus the state did not violate their 14th amendment rights. I have no doubt that had a group of white men surrendered and been executed, the right to bear arms would have been an individual right the entire time, the only reason it was a collective right then was because those who were deprived were black. That judgement left the door open for the states to continue to deprive Freedmen of arms.
As we have progressed as a society, somehow, the argument that the black man is not trustworthy, and we should not let him have guns has been shifted to a nebulous "other people" that take the place of the black man in the argument. I have listened to Paul Helmke of the Brady Group speak. When he gave a speech on why there should be no campus concealed carry, you could have replaced the words "college student" with the words "black people" and it would have sounded like it came from a KKK pamphlet. Most of the gun control rhetoric in public culture boils down to this same type of argument. If you listen to them, almost all gun control arguments try to paint some other "group" as needing to be controlled. They continually play upon peoples fear of others who are not like them.
Now, some people have well reasoned cases for supporting gun control, but they take too long to use in today's soundbite media.