And when a criminal wants a gun, he just has to kill a cop.
Correct. But killing a trained person who has a gun with just a knife would require special circumstances. And it still controls inflow of weapons to criminals.
Giving an another thought: I prefer to fight crime through society enrichment. But still I wouldn't give any WMD to civilians.
edit: As I pointed out and you did: there is no correlation between gun ownership and crime, unless a country is under total totalitarian control.