I agree with a lot of the points you have stated here, man. Sometimes, the pre-emptive prevention result in something it was intended to neutralize. I can't speak for the gun issue, but the same argument can be said for the drug problem here in the Philippines. You could easily replace guns with drugs in that flowchart. Though one might argue that even though guns are inherently not harmful, but drugs are. The point is, if regulation are in place to allow for drugs like marijuana to be legal, then there wouldn't be that drive people would have to dip into harder drugs.
I don't know if you've seen it in the news, but there has been a drug war here in the Philippines for over a year now. The crackdown on illegal narcotics has been compared to the one in Colombia back in the Escobar and the Cali Cartel days. The cycle of violence is taking more lives than it's hoping to save. I really wish that there would a massive realization among the powers-that-be regarding the error of their agenda.
Maybe they should take Portugal's example: https://news.vice.com/article/ungass-portugal-what-happened-after-decriminalization-drugs-weed-to-heroin
From my perspective, it's now about actually helping people, it's about government control. If it's about helping people, we already know what works: legalize it all and help those who are self-medicating because of other issues in their life.
Yeah, the Portugal use case is what many people are proposing. The current government is filled with old-school machismo, that they somehow miss the point of helping people, instead their approach seems to be "look at me, I'm helping people so stand with me or get out of the way"