> Those who know enough to do a technical analysis of such laws, for example, those in California, often come to the conclusion that harassment of the gun owners might be the intended outcome.

Citation needed.

Short of someone involved with the legislation actually saying "yes, well, the point of this is to annoy people who own guns, and we don't care what else the policy it introduces does", the premise that you actually have any idea what the motives of the people who introduce it is rather incredible, and violates the principle of charity. If there's a credible analysis to that effect, well, lead with that. Otherwise, it's most even-handed to assume that the motive behind firearm-related laws is no more to annoy and alienate any more than the purpose of automotive-related laws is to annoy and alienate drivers, though one could claim the latter case is the "de facto" outcome as well, since nobody loves traffic citations or vehicle registration requirements. Even if there's even a case we could do things another way, the laws that exist are drawn from the motives of accountability and safety. The motive for firearm laws is likely most commonly the same.

> For the record, I was talking in a strictly epidemiological sense

That claim would be more credible if you hadn't attributed a motive to legislation that was poorly sourced.

But to get back to the matter of strict epidemiology:

(1) I suppose it's possible that if the reason hunting has dwindled is primarily legal restrictions on either hunting or firearms, then that would be reflected in how the deer population is checked by humans. But I think it's much more likely that in a society with democratic representation, disinterest in hunting would lead legal obstacles to it, rather than the other way around. If there's a correlation, then that's probably the direction it goes.

(2) But that "if" is a generous one. If we expect that restrictions on hunting with firearms are a significant determinant in disease conditions on local deer populations, then we would also expect the locales with strictures on hunting or guns would be the ones we're seeing the most significant spread. Since you picked on California, presumably you'd expect that to be a primary host of the epidemic.

But if we're going by, say, the CDC map in the article, the center of the largest outbreak covers Wyoming, reaching into adjacent states, none of which are exactly famous for restrictive firearm laws (or, for that matter, party governance bent on annoying gun owners). Next on that list you've got Wisconsin and Illinois, which I suppose is good news for partisans who want to argue the center of the outbreak is the deer population in urban Chicago clearly run amok because of its restrictive gun laws. In short, the outbreak map runs largely counter to your thesis.

Now, maybe it was unfair of me to compare your unflattering narrative regarding the motives of those drafting gun laws OR your not-particularly-well-established epidemiological theories to the cognitive problems of someone suffering from prion diseases. You are presumably in full health, and I can own that perhaps it was needlessly rude to make a comparison with a person likely suffering from an illness that may have involved factors they had no awareness of or control over.

But absent a high-quality rebuttal to everything I've argued here, what's your explanation?