Most end up taking a heavy handed approach to these issues and push out or at least attempt to push out bans even when they know themselves that such bans will be difficult to enforce.
You are spot on here, and this is by no means unique to cryptocurrencies. Regulations aimed at building backdoors in to end-to-end encryption messengers or the ever hilarious "banning encryption", and laws such as the "EARN IT" Act or the newer "Lawful Access to Encrypted Data" Act. And this kind of nonsense is by no means unique to the US, with governments around the world introducing similar laws and bills aimed at removing all privacy for the common citizen. Despite being unable to prove a single instance where this kind of privacy invasion has prevented a crime, the US government pushes ahead with it nonetheless under the guise of "safety" and "won't you think of the children!". It is mass surveillance, nothing more, nothing less.
Having said that, however, we should be by no means just rolling over and accepting it. If we let the governments of the world pass these kinds of laws with no fight, then any and all privacy will rapidly become a thing of the past. And when it comes to bitcoin, that means the community not accepting ever more invasive KYC and certainly not rubbishing the vital service that things like mixers and coinjoins provide.