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There's a standard argument about gun control in the US that you hear a lot in the liberal bubble. Obviously, this argument does not appear to be very compelling to the anti-gun control side. It's pretty hard to find the counterarguments while embedded in the bubble, so I'm asking here in the hopes someone might explain them.
The argument comes from making a comparison between cars and guns. Both create about the same magnitude of danger when in the wrong hands, but cars are significantly more important for being able to function in modern society. Therefore guns ownership and usage should be regulated at least as strongly as cars are. In particular, car ownership has a strict licensing requirement including a safety/competency test and also requires insurance in case of accidents. We should therefore pass additional gun regulations requiring the same.
I can imagine the counterargument being in almost any step of this chain of logic:
For some reason, cars are actually far more dangerous than guns in the wrong hands, maybe when you appropriately consider the kind of car or kind of gun people most commonly have.
Maybe it seems that cars are more important for modern living, but actually guns are more important, maybe as protection against low-probability really horrible things---tyrannical government, breakdown of society, etc. I guess this would require making some kind of expected value justification, that the horrible thing is likely enough and guns ownership would actually help enough.
I can't really see anyone disagreeing with cars being regulated to the level the argument claims.
We don't need to pass additional gun regulations like those for cars. Because of so and so reason, guns are actually already regulated more strictly than cars. Just look based on this and this example how much easier it is to get a car than a gun (though as long as it's not actually super misleading, the stereotypical Texas Walmart example makes this hard for me to see).
Which of these points can actually be expanded into counterarguments you guys find compelling? How do you do so? Is there something else I'm not considering?
There's no constitutional amendment declaring your right to drive a car. Had cars existed at the time there might be, but there's not, so it's not much of a comparison.
Yes, this is the argument that's most convincing to me, too: "Cars aren't in the Constitution".
Call me an autistic legal formalist if you want, but if you don't give overwhelming weight to "It's literally in the Bill of Rights" then why are you even an American?
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