They are not.
They are targeted toward amoral people, and their lawyers, who do need this advice, and more to the point, need to know that the FTC is actively engaged in this area. Anytime an agency with enforcement authority issues recommendations like this, it comes with a big implicit “…or we may cause you to regret your decision not to.”
The FTC is also warning businesses that they could face fines for selling access to tools (like LLMs) that can be used to deceive if they don’t take sufficient actions to protect against misuse.
Eg.
> If you decide to make or offer a product like that, take all reasonable precautions before it hits the market. The FTC has sued businesses that disseminated potentially harmful technologies without taking reasonable measures to prevent consumer injury.
The FTC wants to establish AI oversight and control without the legal foundational framework of laws for it.
Gun control doesn't work, so why should AI control?
The FTC is not only stifling innovation by strong-arming companies which produce these tools to limit their capabilities. They're potentially running afoul of the first amendment by imposing restrictions on IP and thus speech.
Can go a step further and consider the 1A protections of generative output.
Fraud mitigation is not quite the same as "oversight and control".
"Gun control doesn't work" as a blanket statement is ridiculous. It hasn't been meaningfully tried in the USA, but it works just fine almost everywhere else. When the US did have any limited gun control at all e.g. (Federal Assault Weapons Ban) it did have limited positive results.
Finally, guns are a distraction, your argument is of the form "rat control doesn't work, why would tiger control?" Well, because, uh, rats and tigers differ quite lot? But not nearly as much as guns and AI do.