Exactly how do you stop a criminal from breaking the law? Lock them up... well that is a stunning failure. The US has the largest percentage of citizens in prison of any country... so that's not working to well.
England has removed most guns from its society, and stabbings and cuttings are the next step. There is a movement in the UK to outlaw 'pointy' knives, and limit them only to chefs.
In 1996 Australia banned and bought back many types of guns. Gun related murder and suicide has gone down, but overall murder and suicide are rates are virtually unchanged, with suicide actually going up.
Australia’s 1996 National Firearms Agreement (NFA) banned several types of firearms and resulted in the government buying hundreds of thousands of the banned weapons from their owners. This essay analyses the evidence from studies examining the effect of removing so many weapons from the community.
www.rand.org
Criminals ain't going to change, and disarming honest citizens only empowers criminals. There are many self-defense uses of firearms, they just don't get the headlines, or the hysteria from anti-gun nuts.