Riot said they are fine with ranged champions using Lethality.

Even when it's obviously not working out properly.

When Lethality (or flat armor penetration, pre-Lethality) was strong, AD-caster ranged champions (Jayce, Miss Fortune, Jhin, Lucian, etcetera) were arguably broken. Most of those champions aren't good with crit & attack speed, or at least not as good, and were essentially balanced around that. Well, attempted to be balanced around that. But we know how that went.

Now, Lethality is what flat armor penetration has become. Early on, when it was fairly weak, the ones that used it were hurt quite a bit (Lucian particularly).

But now it has been buffed again, and those champions are once again a problem.

Why not just make Lethality melee-only, or rather than having it via items, build it into specific assassins' kits, or have an amplifier passive on assassins (that increases the Lethality received from items) while nerfing the amount on items in general, or halve the Lethality amount for ranged, or some other similar option?

It's obviously not working out in a balanceable state for ranged.

The ones dependent on it are either weak or overpowered (arguably) depending on the state it is in.

So re-modelling or re-balancing the specific champions that CANNOT use crit/attack speed that well (thus, excluding Jhin for example since he is still good with crit) so that they won't be garbage-tier while removing or nerfing Lethality options for ranged seems like a far smarter idea to me.