"I assume that's the government's rational, is it also your opinion?"
It is difficult.
What do I personally believe, meaning, if I were King, what would the law be?
If I were King, I would not want people to be able to easily shoot my soldiers, and so I would not allow weapons to be owned by the civilians that could penetrate the body armor of my armed forces.
But, if I were King, I would want the people to be able to enjoy all of the traditional pastimes of the hunt, which are so deeply engrained in French tradition. Therefore, I would allow people to have hunting weapons.
And finally, if I were King, I would not want to go to the great expense and difficulty of trying to police every crevice of the nation (and then, to do it badly), nor to try to register every gun. I think that the only practical way that weak men and women can defend themselves against stronger men is to have guns, so I would allow people to own handguns and to privately carry them in their cars and on their persons.
I would see if this worked as I think it would. If it did, I would expect crime to go down, people to be safer, and my own treasury to be increased because I need spend less money on policing the people.
If, on the other hand, crime increased, I would be inclined to reduce gun rights and require registration.
My starting position on each thing would be to do without regulation, to observe the result, and to impose only the regulation required to maintain the peace.
There are too many important things to worry about in the world than to lard up one's ranks of servants with expensive agents whose sole purpose is to annoy and harrass one's subjects, and thereby provoke resentment of the Crown and sow discord where none need exist.
A man's domicile is his proper estate, and I do not truly care what men do so long as they do not do it in the street and disturb the horses.
I expect that American social conservatives would find my view of tolerating the private vices of the people as being immoral and unacceptable.
But that is what would be, were I King.
Since I am not King, I am apathetic about gun laws in France. People only obey laws like that to the extent that they want to anyway, for obviously nobody can come into one's house to search, nor one's car. If you think you need to have a gun to protect yourself, you buy a gun. As in all things, the law is interesting, but it is only advisory and is not self-executing.
In America, I witness that the law is something of an idol which people believe they are morally, even religiously, obliged to follow (except, curiously, when reporting charitable and business deductions on their US IRS Income Tax Forms or driving the speed limit or drinking alcohol under the age of 21...another nattering nanny law that seems utterly at odds with the spirit of a free people...). And so gun laws are perhaps more offensive in Americans, because Americans are much more uptight about breaking the law if they decide they want to.
Yours is a reasonable position, Vicomte13. I suspect you judge Americans a bit more harshly than the reality of Americans are. More Americans than not hold a similar view to what you've just posted about private rights. And this is why we rail, opine, pound the table about the laws. And to keep nosy others out of our private affairs and our private lives. We have our own "legal regals" constantly intruding upon matters which are NONE of their concern, whatsoever.