This is a facially absurd claim to make based on the extremely motivated behavior of tens of millions of Americans.
> are likely to amplify poor decisions into death and serious injury
For a very questionable definition of "likely". As someone who actually performs explicit risk calculations, I am vastly more worried about hundreds of other risk sources to which I have daily exposure.
I would capture marginal utility by making life more risky and less fearful, so I'm certainly not going to accept the piss-poor risk reduction returns of going after assault rifles.
Do some research on who is actually dying, who is killing, and with what weapons. I think no honest and well-adjusted person who does that can agree with popular gun control initiatives.
Spoken like someone who lives in a city where you can't use a gun. There is a reason why guns laws are unpopular in rural areas: guns are very useful in rural areas. There is no way to safely shoot a gun in a urban area (except a few gun ranges), so any possible use is dwarfed by the danger.
For a more concrete example. My father in law lives in Michigan. His house is seated next to 40 acres of forest. There are often coyotes and other wild animals that will approach his house when they're hungry. If you're unaware, coyotes will hunt, stalk, and kill cats, dogs, and small children.
To protect my children (3-5 years old) and his dogs, he shoots them.
Traps are the best bet of your list and are a lot harder to use. And then you still need to kill the animal, release is cruel to the animal and harmful to whatever is naturally where you release it
In my beautiful 3rd world country (yeah we remained non-aligned during the cold war), Tigers and Leopards have a tendency to come near human settlements and attack domesticated animals.
Over here, killing animals (apart from chicken, fish, duck etc, which people regularly eat) is illegal. That means your can't kill snakes, deers, wild pigs, crocodiles and you certainly cannot kill Tiger, Leopards etc (because they're kind of endangered...).
If you do and they find out, you're going to jail. It doesn't matter whether the aforementioned wild animals killed your animals or humans.
So what do you do if presence of wild animals have been detected? You tell the authorities; they'll set traps, capture the animal, and release it to the forests.
By the way, recently, there was an appeal to the government to declare wild boar as pests, so that it can be killed because wild boars destroy crops and stuff. Government declined, because if the boars are killed, the big cats would starve.
This might all seem strange, but over here tiger/lion/leopard population was dwindling in the last century. But their population is now at a healthy level.
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About the gun situation here: nobody really has guns. Except very few maybe. There's plenty of crimes, but those don't involve a gun. Guns definitely would not be a solution to minimize the crime situation here.
Snakes protected though, as are wolves. There is a problem with people killing them anyway. They are not the major animals rural people target - because they are endangered there are not many.
> You tell the authorities; they'll set traps, capture the animal, and release it to the forests.
This is something that they used to do over here. Then we discovered that when you release wild animals far from home they don't know their way around, and so they have trouble finding enough to eat, where to drink, a place to live. They are thus not in great physical shape when they encounter whatever lived there already and so are easy kill. Predators are either lone or pack animals - either way a stranger is something to kill. As such releasing a trapped animal is cruel. Unless you find a place where there is nothing else of the type, but even then we have to ask about if they have the correct genes, turns out animals of the same species get natural selection for DNA that helps in their location.
Illegal here, both killing deers and eating its meat (even if you didn't kill it).
Good thing in my opinion. Else there would be no deers left here.
In the US, the hunting practices are very sustainable.
Surely you're aware of the second amendment. I'm not sure how your proposition and said amendment can live in the paradigm.
Assault rifles account for only 3% [1] of total gun related deaths. But it is what anti-gun folks focus on as a scape goat. Foolish, emotional, knee-jerk thinking because it is a "Big scary looking weapon". We all lose because the focus is on something mostly ineffective. Perhaps, we can focus our energy on other aspects than "Big scary" weapons.
Have you taken a look at CA AR-15/long-gun laws? It is the most useless regulations one can conceive (finger guard, 10 round magazine, breaking-gun to reload). All it takes is 2 mins to reverse the CA-compliant changes. The lawmakers are fooling us with ineffective policies that don't do anything to prevent these shootings.
Perhaps we can argue about number of children killed in this incident, but the sample size is 1 and standard deviation is infinite.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/02/03/what-the-da...
Revolver rounds would not penetrate, and a carbine would allow him to be flanked much more easily.
EDIT: laws keep honest people in line, but they also give us the ability to punish the dishonest.
So yes, it did make a difference (and also shows that "let's arm teachers" is a ridiculous solution)
And if that's asking too much then maybe the country really is too big and diverse to be governed as a single nation. Anyway, just thinking out loud.
I think many gun owners would agree.