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The “gun debate” in the US is primarily about handguns, since long guns are only rarely used by criminals. And also about the infamous “assault weapons,” which are also only rarely used but make great scary images.

I am assuming that most gun crime in UK is by handguns, despite their illegality, and that “assault weapons” are also illegal.

For most US gun rights people, the UK registration and licensing requirements are very nearly equivalent to confiscation.

There's a long historical backstory, predating by many decades any gun control legislation, to the differences in the cultural position of guns between Britain and the U.S. I've always believed it can be traced right back to the period (let's say, very roughly, the middle of the nineteenth century) when guns first became available in industrial quantities for a mass market: and the very different situation of the two countries at that time.

I won't presume to describe the condition of the U.S.: but Britain was then just embarking on the 'pax Victoriana', more than half a century of unprecedented, settled, peace and prosperity. There were few if any serious threats, either internal or external. There was crime, of course, but for the most part it was successfully contained by the new police forces, without the need for them to be routinely armed. In that environment, it would simply not have occurred to the average Englishman that he might want or need a gun. The suggestion that he might do so would have been thought somewhat preposterous, unless he happened to be either a sportsman or a countryman needing to control vermin. The guns suitable for those two purposes therefore became the only guns owned in any great quantity. Yes, handguns were available and there was a market for them: but it was always a small minority, minute compared to the U.S. Despite all the subsequent historical changes, that pattern has remained largely unchanged ever since: so that when the handgun ban arrived in 1997, the number of legally-owned weapons which had to be surrendered was, as far as I remember, only in the low tens of thousands.