Gun control in UK has been highly effective at reducing the number of firearms, and particularly handguns, in the country.
Saying that it is ineffective because they cannot stop ALL guns from entering is essentially the same argument as saying that we shouldn’t try to stop entry of illegal aliens because no conceivable policy would be 100% effective. Which is true.
If you reject the idea for immigration you are forced to recognize that the argument is not itself valid for guns, either.
Gun control in Britain has been highly effective at reducing the number of firearms owned by law-abiding Brits; not so effective at keeping guns out of the hands of criminals. As pointed out in the article by Matt Palumbo, gun control has had no effect on reducing the number of gun-related homicides in the UK, which is now essentially the same as it was before the gun-control laws were enacted in 1997.
Did you read the article by Palumbo?
I will grant you that gun control can reduce the number of hand guns or guns in general in the possession of private citizens.
But question that puzzles me is how can gun control achieve the goal for which it is the proposed solution? That goal being the significant reduction in the number of homicides.
The simple answer is that it can’t.
Firearms are tools no different than hammers or axes. What changes a firearm, a hammer or an axe from a tool to a weapon is the purpose for which it used.
If you reduce the availability of firearms to the public desiring to commit a homicide more homicides will be committed with other weapons which I believe has occurred in Britain. If I am not mistaken the incidence of homicides committed with knives in Britain has been on the rise.
The point being that homicide happens and the tool used to commit that homicide is purely irrelevant to the problem of how to prevent the homicide.