Clues to think about:

1) It's not for lack of gun laws per se; something else is the problem:

Strict Gun Laws in Chicago Can’t Stem Fatal Shots
By Monica Davey, New York Times, Jan. 29/30, 2013

CHICAGO — Not a single gun shop can be found in this city because they are outlawed. Handguns were banned in Chicago for decades, too, until 2010, when the United States Supreme Court ruled that was going too far, leading city leaders to settle for restrictions some describe as the closest they could get legally to a ban without a ban. Despite a continuing legal fight, Illinois remains the only state in the nation with no provision to let private citizens carry guns in public.

And yet Chicago, a city with no civilian gun ranges and bans on both assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, finds itself laboring to stem a flood of gun violence that contributed to more than 500 homicides last year and at least 40 killings already in 2013, including a fatal shooting of a 15-year-old girl on Tuesday [....]

Chicago’s experience reveals the complications inherent in carrying out local gun laws around the nation. Less restrictive laws in neighboring communities and states not only make guns easy to obtain nearby, but layers of differing laws — local and state — make it difficult to police violations. And though many describe the local and state gun laws here as relatively stringent, penalties for violating them — from jail time to fines — have not proven as severe as they are in some other places, reducing the incentive to comply. [....]

2) Meanwhile, in NYC,

a) my bold emphasis and underlining (especially meant for those who have the tendency to think the world is crazier than it has ever been ):

New York City Suicide Rate Will Likely Top Murder Rate For 2012
Huffington Post, 12/20/2012

[....] According to the NYPD, as of December 12th, there were 388 murders on the year, a sizable 20 percent drop from the same time last year, when there were 493 murders.

The NYPD says that number will likely remain under 400 before the ball drops in Times Square, making it the lowest murder rate the city's seen since 1960, when 390 homicides were reported.

(For perspective, 2,245 people in New York City fell victim to homicide in 1990.)

As Gothamist points out, New York City averages about 475 suicides a year. The Department of Health and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner hasn't released exact number of suicides yet for 2012, but if it's near the average rate, there will have been more suicides than murders in New York City this year. [....]

b) and, my bold emphasis again:

Bloomberg Says Gun Control Responsible For Lower New York Crime Rates, Experts Agree
By Colleen Long, Huffington Post, Jan. 23, 2013

[....] "New York is showing the way for some good strategies in policing," said Harold Pollack, co-director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab.

Getting a thin layer of guns off the streets matters, said Franklin Zimring, author of "The City that Became Safe: New York's Lessons for Urban Crime and Its Control."

"Gun policing in New York got much more effective as every kind of street policing got more effective," he said.

Bloomberg is leading the charge but is backed by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a coalition he started that now has more than 800 mayors from around the country.[....]

At Bloomberg's urging in 2007, the state passed mandatory minimum sentencing laws for gun convictions. A city gun offender registry was created in which officers track serious gun convicts, not unlike sex offenders. Bloomberg fronted a sting operation to expose the gun show loophole.

But the laws didn't start working until police effectively started enforcing them, said Zimring, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Most of the murders in the city are committed with guns – that hasn't changed. But policing has. Under Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, "hot spots policing" proliferated, in which officers flood high-crime areas tracked by a computer reporting system. The department formed a firearms suppression unit in 2006 that identifies traffickers and uses undercover officers to buy and arrest them.

Crime has dropped almost across the board in the decade Bloomberg has been in office. There were 418 killings last year for a population of 8 million people, the lowest number since reliable records were kept starting in 1963. Chicago, for example, had 487 for 2 million people. In 1990, New York City had an all-time high of 2,245 killings.

"Is a lot of that effective street gun policing? Yes," Zimring said.

People caught violating the laws get punished, even famous people, like former New York Giants football star Plaxico Burress, who walked into a nightclub with a loaded gun tucked into his track pants in 2008 and accidentally shot himself in the thigh. The wide receiver had no criminal record but spent nearly two years in jail on a weapons charge.

"That's a deterrent," said Pollack of the crime lab. "You want to create a deterrent for carrying a gun, you prosecute someone who didn't injure anyone else. A celebrity, no less."

Most of the guns used in shootings in the city come from out of state, officials said. Overall, New York City has about 5,100 firearm-related arrests each year – the majority of the 7,600 or so statewide, according to statistics from the state Division of Criminal Justice Services.

Those figures don't include when someone is arrested on a murder charge for shooting another person to death. A convicted gun trafficker was sentenced just last week in Manhattan to 15 years for selling 15 illegal guns to an undercover officer.

Mark Kleiman, a professor who studies crime policy at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that by enforcing laws, authorities in New York are keeping people off the streets who are more likely to be committing serious crime.

"There are clear consequences for having an illegal gun," he said. [....]