Those are the acceptable exceptions which came to my mind.

Until the Vietnam War, the voting age was 21. The argument for lowering the voting age was that if a person is old enough to die for their country, then they are old enough to vote. They could have just raised the draft age to 21, but they didn't. They wanted minds they could easily mold into killing.

California may have the most mass shootings, but they also have ten percent of the country's total population. So, just form the start they should statistically have more mass shootings. California's gun laws are in response to mass shootings, as an after the fact effort. Ideally, common sense gun laws should be in place BEFORE mass shootings become the daily reality and become "normalized". Because after people see it as "normal" it is very difficult to stop it. Adding more guns, as in "The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to have a good guy with a gun", only results in more deaths. Once the bullets start flying, how do you tell the "good guys" from the bad guys? Anyone and everyone who has a gun become a priority target.

When I was in my teens, I took classes in gun safety and was a pretty descent shot, as I got 14 out of 15 into a one inch circle with a rifle at 100 yards, but I never felt the need to own a gun. Even after experiencing a home invasion robbery, I still didn't think having a gun would have helped me, but it would have caused the robbers to shoot at me, when in fact they didn't need to when I had no gun.

Property can be replaced. If you get shot and killed, there is no resurrection. You're just done living.

@snytiger6 I get your point with the good guys with guns argument, but generally speaking there is a way to differentiate between the good and bad armed people... the former don't go around intimidating or threatening others while the latter do. For example, that shooting at an Indiana mall last summer... bystanders were aware that Elisjsha Dicken was not a threat by how he was acting. As for the argument that more guns will equal more deaths goes, I could make an argument that no guns present by law abiding citizens still equals death, and potentially lots of death. Why do you suppose crazed gunmen almost always pursue places like schools or shopping malls, because they know chances are high they would not be met with any serious confrontation. Given the fact how schools are supposed to be gun free zones, that sure doesn't stop deranged gunmen from opening fire in schools, and when sure situations occur who do we call for help to neutralize the threat? You guessed it, they call for the police, who come equipped with guns themselves to deal with the threat. Sure, that may include death, but that would be the death(s) of a serious threat, so can't say I'd think such deaths would qualify as a tragedy.

Even if California has roughly ten percent population of the whole country, if their laws worked as intended then there would be considerably less to no such crimes, but that's not the case.

That be your choice as to whether or not to own a gun, and I can surely respect that, but not all of us gun owners own guns primarily for self defense, as there are other reasons for owning them. I have mine mostly for recreational target shooting, and my secondary consideration would be that I'm a collector. Although I do live in a rough city with a considerable rate of crime, for the most part I am not concerned about someone breaking into my residence.

Regarding the last part of your comment that property can always be replaced, I have to disagree, there are exceptions. For instance, the box that holds my father's ashes, if someone were to steal that and for some reason I would never have been able to track down who was responsible for that, that item could not be replaced. That's just one example and I probably could think of more. Also, just because you made a choice to not get confrontational with an armed intruder does not automatically mean that you would end up surviving the ordeal. Over the years I've heard of far too many stories of robbery victims complying with the robber's demands only to get shot dead afterwards anyways. It only stands to reason that if someone was bold enough to hold you at gunpoint, they might end up being bold enough to shoot you after they get what they wanted from you. Some armed robbers like that probably don't want to let live anyone who could readily identify them. At least when armed yourself you have a fifty/fifty chance of walking away with your life, but if you choose to go unarmed then you are totally at the mercy of the gunman's own conscience, and these days knowing how mentally unstable and violent-prone some folks can be I wouldn't be one to leave that to chance. That's cool by the way on the gun safety courses you had taken in your teens, some years back took such a course myself at a local community college, which in turn was a benefit as at that time I had worked in armed security.

That all said, I understand that owning a gun is not for everyone, and I also know that laws don't exactly always work out as intended either.