True. Many people are unaware of the difference. And that confusion allows bad laws to be imposed with majority approval. Yellow journalism and political propaganda don't help at all.

The Las Vegas shooter did a terrible thing, but actual machine guns and assault rifles are available on the black market. Would more laws imposing arbitrary restrictions on peaceful people have stopped him? No. And the bump stock ban declaring thousands of innocent people "felons" was a stupid response.

People are used to cars, but cars are objectively far more dangerous than guns. So it's not a fair comparison at all, but not in the way you think, and that is the point.

You cite "gun-related deaths," but that is blatant cherry-picking of the data. Violent crime rates have plummeted in the US since the earlyn1990s before the Clinton-era ban on scary-looking guns and continued after that law sunsetted. Crime rates are primarily associated with the black markets arising from government prohibitions and impoverished inner cities where sociopolitical and economic turmoil is directly caused by government impositions. Blaming the guns is nonsense, and imposing restrictions on peaceful people won't prevent crime. And don't forget that countries report crime rates differently. If I am not mistaken, many report only convictions, and not victims, in homicide.

I do admit that there is a suicide problem in the US, but that is also a very complicated issue. Sure, guns are a fast and simple method, but so are poisons, carbon monoxide, and leaping from tall structures and bridges. Further, the US suicide rate overall is comparable to that of Europe and far lower than that of strict-gun-control Japan.

The world is a dangerous place, but placing arbitrary restrictions on peaceful people only makes it more so.