Well, we are definitely overwhelmingly responsible citizens. That's how we got firearms licences in the first place; half the people out there who don't have them probably couldn't get them.
However, to say that the registration encourages or forces owners to be more responsible is airy-fairy, wishful thinking. You can't take a piece of paper, put it beside a firearm inside the closed doors of one's own domicile, and expect that to have any kind of an effect.
In terms of tracing lost or stolen firearms, it is a federal offence right now to not report a lost or stolen firearm. You must do that whether the gun is registered or not. Very few of those guns traced actually make it back to their owners in spite of the fact that we've had judges issue court orders repeatedly to police services to return the firearms, and they aren't returned.