I'm not taking the other side, but that's a really bad argument. You're missing a reason for us to think that traffic deaths put any kind of floor on firearm deaths. Given the very different usage patterns, I would expect the two numbers to be basically unrelated. If we try to get at the impact of licensing and regulation by looking only at cars (and we can get very different answers if we look at other things) we see that comparing US historically to US today or US today to some other countries today, safety improvements are probably saving more like 20 people per 100k - bigger than the entire problem that remains with either cars or guns (and "bigger than both combined" is well within the error bars).
And finally, if we can reliably save 1 person per 100k, that's a significant improvement for the 3k people we've saved and the people who love them! Whether it is worth what we have to trade away, and whether we can actually get a reliable improvement, is a separate question (whose answer likely depends on the particular policy proposal under discussion).
And finally, if we can reliably save 1 person per 100k, that's a significant improvement for the 3k people we've saved and the people who love them! Whether it is worth what we have to trade away, and whether we can actually get a reliable improvement, is a separate question (whose answer likely depends on the particular policy proposal under discussion).