With the caveat that this is vast generalization: I think the chief difference between Canadian and American behaviour with gun laws goes back to a difference in what rights are top of the hierarchy. In the US it's individual rights, in Canada, group rights. The Canadian Constitution clearly limits individual rights to what is reasonable in a free and democratic society. Given that the Canadian Constitution is just 30-something years old, the courts are still working out what that means in different situations. But generally speaking they seem slightly more willing to limit personal freedom than courts in the US. It only takes a small difference in wording of laws and their interpretation to have a big effect on society. I say this not as a lawyer but as a more or less informed citizen.

There is an element of chicken and egg in this effect, since it was Canadians who drafted the constitution to begin with and Canadians who interpret it and who are then bound by those interpretations, and write new laws that fit within its framework.

The difference between US and Canadian gun policy may be explained a lot by history. In terms of need for guns in the settlement of the Canadian west there are three factors that created a tremendously different settlement culture here compared to the US.

1. Canada's northwest (what is now Ontario north and west of Georgian Bay & Lake Superior, the prairies, and BC apart from Victoria and Vancouver) was not significantly settled until the Canadian Pacific Railroad (CPR) was built 1880-1885. By that time European diseases brought by a scant population of missionaries and fur traders had decimated the original populations. Enormous buffalo hunts had very nearly decimated that population--buffalo were virtually extinct by the time The Railway (see #2) was completed in 1885. By the time Canada was settling the prairies, original populations were in a weakened state from starvation and European disease; they also knew what usurping of land had occured in the USA but were far less able to resist. Their chief food supply was so vastly dwindled that during the time of railroad building and soon after, many reluctantly but of necessity moved onto reserves where they would at least have basic food and shelter, if not health and dignity--buffalo were no longer a reliable way to provide for one's family and tribe.

2. During railway construction is precisely when Canada's west began to be settled beyond a few bone-mashing cart tracks between fur trading posts and a few adventuresome naturalists, homesteaders especially along the Red River, and wannabe miners. The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) controlled the rules within 20 miles either side of the track and they had their own enforcers to limit employees' and service providers' participation in vices. The majority of navvies (labourers) were either recently decended from Europeans, majority from UK, or were directly from the UK. A smaller number were from other parts of Europe.

3. The British ideas of law and order formed the basis for the North West Mounted Police during this era. This force was in place as the west was being settled, with little tolerance for the American style "wild west."

Putting together those three uniquely Canadian conditions of western settlement:
The majority of the End of Track population, as that tent settlement moved across the prairie, would naturally have within it largely British assumptions about guns. Add to that the fact that original populations and their food supply were decimated by that time, there wasn't the extent of warring resistance that marks stories of the "wild west" of the US.

It's only in the last 30 years or so that Canada has begun to develop a self separate from its British roots rather than exactly in their image. Canada was extremely British at the time the fundamentals of the country were put together and for a long time afterwards. Our gun culture reflects that. And lately, urban gun culture reflects growing drug and gang crime.

I couldn't say which gun policy approach is better, only which one I'm used to and therefore comfortable with: The one in which I grew up.