I have been a conservative leaning libertarian most of my life. I want very much for us all to have more rights and more freedoms. That being said, I'm also an engineer. I study data all the time. I look into data for cause and effect. So let's talk and data, and let's talk about cause and effect.
Prior to 2008, it was very hard to get a semi automatic high capacity rifle like an AR-15. That year, the US supreme court ruled on the second amendment for the first time in 70 years. Prior to that, local laws and state laws limited some access to some guns. One of these laws was a federal ban on assault rifles.
In the 90s, there were around 100,000 of these guns sold each year. 2.8 million were sold in 2020. 1 million plus each year since 2015. That's not open for debate, it's just a fact. It doesn't care about what you or I feel.
In the same time frame, mass shootings have gone up. The numbers can change depending on the exact criteria you set to define a mass shooting. But regardless of the criteria, the trend always looks the same.
For reference:
https://rockinst.org/gun-violence/mass-shooting-factsheet/
As more high capacity semi automatic rifles are sold, the rate of mass shootings goes up. That's cause and effect. I spent most of my life wanting us all to be responsible. We should be mature enough to handle the great responsibility that comes with great freedom. Unfortunately, the data doesn't care about my feelings either. It's clear that we, as a society, are not better off with the freedom to own these kind of weapons. I am a gun owner. I love freedom. But I'm also very aware of data and bias. What I want and what I spent most of my life believing just isn't supported by data. We should not have to have daily mass shootings. We used to not have that.
When the gun laws changed, the danger to society changed. We tried to show that we were responsible enough to have unlimited access to guns of all types. We tried, but we failed. We need to be honest with ourselves and follow the data. The data says that if we limit the sale of certain kinds of weapons, we will return to a time when these shootings were the rare tragedies instead of the everyday norm.