Pointing a gun at someone is dangerous. Pointing a moving car at someone is dangerous. We are gentler on car accidents because almost everyone relies on them and they are so normalized.

Is that a wrong approach though? I don’t have to point a gun at anyone to visit family, but practically I do have to get behind the wheel of a car. That can be fixed by being rich, but not everyone can be rich. The reason people drive despite the inherent risk to themselves and others is more about infrastructure than poor personal choices. I think it might be better to focus on solving the infrastructure problem than being more willing to put people in prison for driving mistakes, because the latter isn’t going to deter people from driving when most of us basically have to in order to live a normal life.

Like you said, it’s societal negligence. With guns, owning one is truly optional for almost everyone, and I think it’s reasonable to impose a much higher standard of personal responsibility on their use than with basically anything else. If you have a gun you better be capable of always using it correctly under pressure or else you should not have chosen to have one and criminal liability makes perfect sense.