One answer is 'you limit the ability of individuals to access dangerous items.''

Which is impossible. No seriously, without an authoritarian crackdown the likes of which our society will never survive, you can't do it. You cannot neuter the world enough, you cannot put enough bumpers on reality to keep dangerous predators in human shape from ever getting to significant materials/tools, and still have a functional civilization. The ability of a human being to cause the deaths of other human beings has been increasing since we started putting rocks in the heads of clubs. As technology becomes more advanced, high energy density materials become more available, and more easily understood and applied to cause death. As a species, we will either get to a point where basically everyone will have the ability to kill everybody else and choose not to, or we'll regularly suffer large, self-inflicted die offs.

If the two were interchangeable

I'm ignoring the rest of the comment and focusing on this part not because the rest isn't valid, but because this is the part that I am most worried about. It's the fact that it's whack-a-mole. Cars kill shit loads of people every year on accident and would probably kill more if other forms of violence were more difficult.