Since you’re posting in good faith and are using logic I’ll weigh in and counter what you’re saying.
The principal problem with your arguments is you are basing all of your bolt-action casualty forecasts on efficacy and casualties on practice, range time, and a calm emotionless experience at a one way shooting range shooting at stationary targets.
In reality, shooting a bolt action rifle or levergun is a major hindrance (compared to semi-auto high capacity rifles/carbines) to an assaulter. We know this out of simple logic and by understanding the way these weapons function. Logical counter arguments are as easily understood as:
- These weapons’ firing rates are very much reduced from their semi-auto cousins.
- Loading and unloading these weapons takes longer than their semi-auto brethren.
- The act of recharging (operating the bolt or lever) takes the weapons barrel off of target momentarily in addition to the recoil whereas a semi-auto is only dealing with slight recoil depending on the energy and caliber of the round being fired.
- If these weapons were just as effective as semi-auto, we (my former employer) wouldn’t have evolved in the 1960s to the M16 high capacity rifle. Even before that, the M1 in WWII was a semi-auto large caliber rifle that replaced bolt action WWI-era rifles and provided a major advantage to our infantry over previous generations.
Yes you can get “good” at bolt-action assaulting. But it’s a different measure of good. A complete noob can grab an AR variant, add a forward handgrip on the bottom rail of the hand guard, add a close combat optic sight on the top rail and be very lethal instantly.
You’re also operating in a binary space where you’re trying to measure with complete success of eliminating mass shootings or “it’s useless!” This is silly and is our number one reason we can’t have intelligent conversations about getting weapons of war out of the citizenry’s hands. No, eliminating these rifle/carbines won’t fully stop mass shootings but it’ll weaken their potency.
Replacing the 2A with common sense rights that keep weapons of war out of peoples’ homes would in all likelihood go a very long way to making these shootings much less lethal and much less efficacious.