Should There Be Stricter Gun Control Laws?

Time to set the record straight on multiple counts.
First of all, I would like to address the misapplication of the term "assault rifle".
An assault rifle is a military infantry armament. They usually fire ammunition which is incompatible with the civilian version. The 5.56x45mm NATO round is distinct from its dimensionally identical civilian counterpart (.223 Remington) in multiple ways. First off, the NATO round is significantly higher pressure. The chamber specifications are also different, but in a way that it too hard to explain here technically. Either way, firing military ammunition in a civilian rifle will cause forceful cycling of the action at best, and catastrophic failure at worst. Thus, the incompatibility of ammunition.
Also, assault rifles are always fully automatic. Always. A civilian cannot purchase a fully automatic weapon, and has not been able to since Prohibition. So the weapons you are trying to ban are not assault rifles. They are semi automatic civilian rifles that happen to look scary to the gun grabbers.
However, the gun grabbers seem to know most of this. They know that the guns they want to ban are not actually assault rifles, so they came up with a new moniker. Assault weapons, this time. They also define this term. How?

An assault weapon is any semi automatic rifle, shotgun, or pistol, which has two or more features specified by the law makers. These features are things like, black synthetic stocks, flash hiders, pistol grips, bi-pods, and stuff like that. These bans that are proposed are not against assault rifles. Those have been banned since Prohibition. The bans are meant against weapons that the authors find scary looking.

Now let us address the "legitimate sporting purpose" of the AR 15. I personally do not own an AR 15. I am faster with my bolt action 22-250 than most people who own ARs are with their rifle, and I do this while being significantly more accurate (which is, sadly to say, not saying much. For whatever reason, marksmanship in this country is horrible.). I do not feel the semi automatic capability is actually that useful to me as a hunter. However, having said that, I know a great many people who use AR rifles for all sorts of things. A guy by the name of Virgil hunts coyotes, varmints, deer, mountain lion, and black bear with his AR. (He has one of those Alexander Arms rifles, and 4 different uppers for it. One is in 458 Socom, one is in 6.8spc, one is in 223, one is in 22 rim-fire. In case anyone was interested.) I am also aware of numerous people who enter competitions with their rifles, and people who have used one of these rifles to defend their home. Contrary to what the liberals will have you believe, these weapons actually do have tasks other than the killing of babies.

Now, having stated the above facts, I would like to state my opinion. Firearms are not the issue here. The issue is people, as it always is. Our society is based around capitalism, which means that we are motivated by money. This seems to work better than the alternative, but it is imperfect. Too many times have I seen first hand our government, our protectors, our leaders, release people who are simply not safe to society onto the streets because the institutions which could hold them are too expensive. We may debate for years about the necessity of a certain shaped hunk of metal, but the mental health crisis is beyond a doubt, and must be fixed.

Just one more reason to doubt the Left's intentions when they push for more draconian "gun control". Is it really the safety of kids they're interested in, or pushing their decades-long obsession with disarming Americans? The fact that almost no one in the media is even looking into the psychological factors that are making people "snap" and commit massacres should tell us something. No, their only "solution" is to try more gun control, including demonizing all guns as "assault weapons" and all gun owners as "latent psychos" awaiting that final "push" into committing killing sprees. Oh, and once again they trot out the old "bogey" of large-capacity magazines. Here in California we've banned the sale of magazines over 10 shot capacity for many years, and what good has it done? Anyone wanting one can just go out of state to get them, and there's still literally millions of them out there. Besides, anyone familiar with their firearm can change small-capacity clips in lighting speed. "Running out of ammo" is certainly NOT a factor that will lessen the death-tolls in these psycho-shooting rampages. WHY is the Left so afraid of looking into the psychological factors behind these crazies? I mean, normally the Left assigns much respect and credence to anything coming out of the medical or psychological fields... so why are they so willing to ignore the mass of study data, usually done at their good liberal universities and medical institutes, that shows it's this culture of violence we live with that's warping the minds of our children? Could it be because most media outlets that promote this culture of violence are owned and staffed by Leftists? Like Hollywood movies, network TV shows, the rap and hip-hop music industry? Hmmmm.... some "food for thought".