That is a good point about the comparison with cars. I have been stepping neatly past the trust idea (which applies to computers as well, and I'm a coder). It's a very powerful idea that I haven't thought about enough.
But I think firearms do represent a unique capability: how many bricks per minute can you throw? From how far away could you snipe someone with a pencil? I think it's one of degree: assault weapons, high-powered sniper rifles, semi-autos that can be easily modified for full-auto fire... Those weapons are all over a boundary for me, a boundary that the U.S. is too lax with drawing.
I suspect that you believe that the potential for violence is something that can be separated from a peaceful society, but that isn't the case. More so, I think living within such a worldview is intellectually stunting. In practice we see that private gun ownership is not uniquely dangerous. We see that automobiles are far more dangerous, for example. We see that the overwhelming majority of gun owners are peaceful people, we see that the overwhelming majority of guns are never used for violence. Consider some other statistics as well, if you were a parent would you be afraid of sending your child to a house that contains guns? What about sending your child to a house with a pool? In actuallity the 2nd is about 100 times more dangerous.
More so, taking guns out of the hands of peaceful citizens has consequences. People use guns to defend themselves against others. Indeed, such uses are far more common than gun homicides. Banning guns means allowing rapes, murders, muggings, assaults. How can you be so comfortable with that?
As far as the lethality of mundane objects and activities. Consider how many people can be killed by cars by driving them into a crowd. Consider how many people can, and are, killed by arson. Consider how many people are raped by a perpetrator who has no weapon other than their physical strength. Violence and the potential for violence is part of society. Personally I think society is better served by peaceful individuals growing in maturity and responsibility and learning how to wield firearms in a way that supports a peaceful society by defending it against would be murderers, rapists, and thieves.
When I said that the issue was more nuanced, I meant that we shouldn't ban all guns in the U.S. Please do not represent my position as such or assume that I believe that responsible gun owners cannot provide safe play destinations for my children. I grew up in Texas and went on hunting trips every year growing up. Please.
I don't think that it's naive to hope that we can curb our species' trend for violence, and I don't think that the threat of more violence in retribution is that solution long-term. You have a narrative about trusting people with lethal power, but then speak of tides of "murderers, rapists, and thieves" that you want to defend yourself with. It feels like your solution, a well-armed society, is merely stemming the symptom rather than trying to find or address any specific cause. I'm not satisfied with that.
I am not saying that it is guns' fault, by why does the U.S. have one of the highest rates of homicide of any country in the industrialized world?
The comparison with cars is a good one though. Cars are an example of how lethal power exists in the hands of many in society. And that's true to an enormous degree, not just with cars though they are a prime example. Most people have the ability to take the lives of others without a great deal of effort. Imagine what would happen if, say, 1ppm of humanity woke up and decided to do murder that day. There would be a lot of killings. And yet society is still largely peaceful. Because most people can be trusted with the lives of their fellow humans. And it's important to realize how deeply we take that for granted. Something as simple as riding a bus or driving in traffic represents a tremendous trust in our fellow citizens to not murder us, and they trust us not to murder them as well.
Firearms do not represent injecting a unique capability for death and injury into society, they're just make that aspect of daily life more blatantly obvious. But just as with cars, knives, fists, pencils, hammers, bricks, fire, and all that most people can be trusted with firearms most of the time. And indeed when firearms are allowed into the hands of citizens of good intent they can be used to thwart crimes quite often. Many rapes and roberies have been stopped by firearms, often just by the mere presence of a firearm (not even counting the deterrent effects). And in some spectacular cases firearms have been used defensively to stop mass murders in their tracks. But these examples tend to be less dramatic than successful mass shootings, so they tend to be less well known.
On the whole, the point still stands, it is safer for the average person to own a gun than to own a car. And that is a testament to the trustworthiness of the average citizen, and the degree to which many people take gun ownership seriously and solemnly.