It's pretty clear to me that gun laws have become less restrictive. Stand your ground laws and open carry have become more commeon and more normalized. Tactical rifles (i.e. semi-automatic variants of military rifles like the AR) are less restricted since the "assault weapons" bans expired or were overturned. Perhaps even more importantly, ARs have become a much more prominant part of gun culture. Openly carrying guns at protests has become more normalized (although it did exist before; e.g. many Black Panther demonstrations).

> Openly carrying guns at protests has become more normalized...

Yes. For hundreds of years, open carry has been legal just about everywhere. More people choosing to do things that have been legal for ages doesn't mean that the relevant regs have been loosened.

I do note that over the past couple of decades it has become illegal to openly carry in many places, [0] so that's a substantial increase in the restrictiveness of firearms regulation.

> Tactical rifles (i.e. semi-automatic variants of military rifles like the AR)....

By this you mean to say "semi-automatic variants of rifles designed in the last sixty five-ish years". [1]

> ...are less restricted since the "assault weapons" bans expired or were overturned.

You should look into the status of state regs on firearms possession and notice how many of them have been enacted within the past decade. You should also look into the regs on ammunition production, sale, and possession. While the regulation of ammo possession, sale, and production is not literally the regulation of firearms, a firearm without its ammo is no fun to operate, unless you're really into swinging around a very expensive, poorly-balanced club.

[0] ...among them, schools, hospitals, wherever a private business owner places a legally-conformant notice...

[1] Seriously, go look at when the AR-15 was designed and first manufactured.