Not particularly facetious, although I did suspect that you might have been talking about a modern toy or small-game handbow rather than one of D&D's tech level and powerful enough to kill larger game or humans effectively.
Quite frankly, while I have a rough idea of the poundage required, I don't know how realistic it would be to be able to apply enough strength to pull that. 200 plus pounds sounds a lot, but I don't know whether it is reasonable for a strong person to be able to exert that in this situation. And not knowing anything about you, you may well be in the strength range capable of doing it.
So I asked.
Well... I will take it. At least we are still talking. I recently questioned some one else (who will remain unnamed) as to a mater of them claiming my opinion / questioning their train of thought was disrespectful instead of just part of conversation and they ban me from all there posts instead of pointing out what I said that they considered disrespectful and furthering the conversation, which conversations about D&D is why I thing we are all here. I seem to get misunderstood a lot because I am weird so I try to lean on the side of "if it sounds like they are being a jerk, maybe I read it wronge?" ... Part wrong.... is good enough, lol.
Modern crossbows have a generally wider bow due to better quality control of the metal it consists of. This gives a longer draw length, and thus more power to the bolt. (Or less poundage draw required to achieve a specific power.)
The high poundage required and low relative strength of the materials meant that rather than a dropping pin or channel that the string is pulled down into, a rotating wheel or cylinder was often used.
(As a rough general rule, a full-size crossbow needs to have a poundage of three times that of a bow in order to generate equivalent power.)
Well, Mine was sold as a "small game hand crossbow" it does have a spot for a scope and I believe it would kill someone but I have no idea what the poundage is. That said I have ... changed interests... not sure if changed is the right word... I have always loved swords more but I was not aware HEMA was a thing until about a year ago and hitting a defenseless post with a sword was not as interesting as shooting a paper target on a bail of hay... Hitting another person with sword who hits back and no one (usually) actually gets hurt kind of makes the crossbow boring.
Any way, I don't really study crossbows and just started REALLY learning about swords but from a historical "how does it work" prospective you have peeked my curiosity on the subject. ...google search... Found one with a looking mechanic similar to mine... but its full size I think. So this might work they way I am talking but you suspect the draw would be too hard to pull with two fingers the way I did mine, and it does not have the loading bar which makes mine easier.
Here is an image of one almost just like mine, but mine is gray.
Modern version
Here is a crossbow with a similar lock and kind of what I was thinking of.
https://uncrate.com/assets_c/2011/04/medieval-crossbow-thumb-960xauto-12893.jpg
I would love a visual if you can find one like your talking about it just for perspective.... please... I did see some with crank but I closed the tab without thinking to grab the link but obviously that style would not work.
You makes some great points and it does seem that the creators of D&D are in agreement with some if not all of what you said, guessing by the errata Oofta found:
"Ammunition (p. 146). Loading a onehanded weapon requires a free hand"
Thank you. Its interesting to see how D&D strength might relate to actual figures that we can relate to.
Your welcome... don't ask me to do the other stats I thought about it already and I got nothing. lol. I for half a second thought it would be cool to try and stat me out in D&D but I think I would be better off just letting my friends vote on how they see me as a character... Str 13 , Dex 10, Con 10, Int 10, Wis 6, Cha 2 .... just guessing. lol
Edit: I was trying to remove the picture and put links only to save space, if anyone know how do/undo that let me know I will. I deleted the attachement statement and its still there so obviously that was not the right way. lol