Crime rates were on their way down, the gun ban had absolutely no affect. That's irrelevant though, you don't take away people's rights because there are criminals.

Well, gun control and gun ban are basically really simple matters. First of all you have to realize, that no matter what you do, at the best you will have control only for the guns owned by law abiding citizens. Sadly enough, those guns are no threat anybody but criminals, so what is the point? Only what you do, is increase the number of defenseless victims. Criminals will always have their guns, and every gun ban country has seen massive increase of the illegal trafficking of arms. Why not, because gun ban make it to be big business, while every fucking imbecile wants illegal gun.
Same time in Estonia, which was after the CCCP era one of the most criminal countries of the world, they start to give permits for self defense guns to law abiding citizens. What happen? In first decade, they more than half the statistic about the homicides, and some crime types drop over 70%. Now, in gun related homicides Estonia is far behind Finland, which do not give any gun permits for self defense. Funny enough in same time we have seen massive increase of Estonian criminals working in Finland, so what lower the statistic in Estonia, increase them in Finland where nobody has any means of self defense.