Here is an argument I came up with after reading this reddit thread. I would like to hear what other people think about this.
Most countries have some kind of gun culture. Even in Europe, in the countryside, people just have a shotgun around. And most don't care about regulation. And it's healthy. Guns over generations make people independent and save.
The argument that control or regulation makes people safer is wrong in the same way any prohibition is wrong: Criminals will always get illegal guns anyway. The fact that you can not have a legal gun makes them even more attractive to the people who really should not have them.
So why do governments push for regulation? Or rather when, under what circumstances? It's when the government becomes more authoritarian. When a government starts distrusting it's citizens. This goes hand in hand with militarizing police. Creating two classes: The ones that can have guns and the ones that can not.
And that gets me back to the post I referenced first: The laws in Uruguay seem more design to help citizens, like doing silly safety laws about reloading, but they are not a tool to tip a power balance. When the US was founded it was based a lot on the believe that the government should work for the people and not against them. Europe has a deep history of weapon ownership as a tool for class separation: Only noble knights were allowed to carry a sword. The people who built America tried to not do that.
I think the approach a country takes towards gun control tells us a lot about how its government relates to its people. Unfortunately the lines are really blurry: Some laws try to really just make people safer. Others are about power. And in arguing we need to make the distinction between well meaning and power seeking. For example arbitrary magazine limits are clearly a power play only. Having a waiting period for a gun purchase is annoying but probably well intentioned.