Surely you're aware of the second amendment. I'm not sure how your proposition and said amendment can live in the paradigm.
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.
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.
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.
-----
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.
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.
