If that's the limit of our ability to consider something better, the kids don't stand a chance.
Seriously, get real. Justifying the elimination of natural rights with "thinking of the children" is a common trope by authoritarians to seize control.
I'm not reassured when you describe recurrent mass murder of children as a trope. Get some perspective.
I grew up in an area where every other house had dozens of guns. Surprisingly, we didn't have a school shooting every day. In fact, we had none. I'm not using anecdotal data to support any argument, but if it were indeed the case that more guns = more baby and child killings, then I wouldn't be here to write this comment.
My main concern here is the erosion of natural rights based on the premise that it is "for the children", which is a trope. It's been used for all manners of privacy violations, from indefinite detentions, proposals to ban encryption, PRISM, etc.
If you genuinely care and have an open mind, you'll see it's extremely dubious as to whether enforcing more restrictions would have any effect, barring throwing the Constitution in the trash and seizing everything. Conversely, we can think of the children and ban cars so they stop dying in car accidents, because no more car accidents will happen.
I'm okay with incremental positive change, but they have to be data-driven and made respecting the Constitution. The US got this far due to its framework, its shared values on freedom and liberty, and lack of an oppressive, overreaching government. It derives its success from the freedom of its citizens to chart the course of their life, not from the nanny state telling them what they can and can't smoke, shoot, eat, code, read, write, or drive.
But you're at one of these institutions (middle through undergrad) for 11 years? Your probability of being at one of these during a shooting compounds to 90.86%.
9-in-10 people and their friends had a nice time, but that remaining 1 was there when four or more of their school were gunned down.
I don't disagree that the Constitution gives Americans a fair whack at freedom, but it also frustrates democracy. If a clear majority wanted to change things, even incrementally (background and mental health checks, storage laws esp child-access, restricting higher form assault weapons), overcoming the 66% bar really makes progress on [inexplicably] partisan issues like this impossible.
You've got to weigh up what this law was designed to do, against what it's permitting today. I think it's obvious we come to a different result when we balance that equation but I'm not deaf to your views either.
(Edit: Important to note that 434 is the mass shooting number. It's just 1% of all gun violence in schools.)