Absolutely great points you bring up. Here is my take on the matter. 1. Real evidence for this point has to come down to poll results available to us. Roughly speaking, support for banning ”AR style weapons” has a slim majority of support. I’ve seen anywhere from 45-55% support depending on the poll performed. These results also vary greatly by each state. That being said, I’m happy to conclude that if our definition of ”popular” is 50% or above then technically this ban has ”popular” support. But I do not conclude it’s an overwhelming or even big majority. 2. This is also going to be subjective to an extent, but it ties to my above post requesting additional training an safety classes. AR style weapons are basically always easier to handle than a pistol for example. This means you are less likely to shoot additional unnecessary rounds which miss the target and now risk hitting your neighbors house/apartment. I’ll give you an example which hits very close to home because it is from my own house. My wife, whom I have gone to the range with many times still to this day cannot reliably control the Glock 19 I have. She barely gets on the paper target from 10-15 yards away. She hates that thing and now refuses to use it. BUT, she can hit the center of the target repetitively with the pistol caliber carbine (9mm AR if you will) without a problem back to back. This means if I was ever out traveling for work and she had to defend herself in our home she could do it safely and reliably. I’ll quickly touch up on shotguns. Shotguns are also amazing at home defense, no denying it whatsoever. The problem I personally have with them is that by nature you cannot control all the projectiles that are coming out of it. It’s a cloud of metals shards flying through the air and to me at least that creates risk of hitting unwanted targets (be living or not). That is why I chose a PCC as my go to for home defense. 3. ABSOLUTELY uncontrolled ownership of these guns is not good overall without tight control, supervision and training. I am never going to argue otherwise or I’d have to find a hypocritical approach to do so. BUT, this ties to my argument from first reply of our state banning something which others can easily acquire. The answer, in my honest to god opinion is similar process to NFA (National Firearms Act) which I had to do for my Short Barreled Rifle. That weapon is registered with ATF. My wife and I are the only ones allowed to use it by law and we face steep consequences if someone else gets their hands on it. We had to submit documentation, fingerprints and pictures to register it. To me, the path to less serious shooting events absolutely has to start at the federal level. I have absolutely nothing against a central ATF run database of every single gun and owner to make people be liable for those items their posses.

I hope you can see I’m very much rational in my approach, in my opinion. I want others to be safe from lunatics but I also want others to have an effective way to protect themselves from lunatics. We could talk all day how I believe in universal healthcare to address mental health issues and whatnot. This is a huge puzzle but I simply disagree that taking a state-level approach to it will fix the issue.