A friend of mine says that she believes in the 10-day waiting period and background check for all guns, including gun shows. But she also believes in legal gun ownership.
That's too lax. That's not enough. That would still have allowed Columbine and Newtown, at minimum. Here's what I believe and want, and I don't think it's too restrictive.
In a perfect world, nobody would have guns. This is, I admit, not a perfect world. So here's what I want:
I want anyone who owns a gun to have to take a yearly gun-safety course to get a gun license. I want them to have to renew it once a year. I want them to have to carry liability insurance on each gun they own, and I want them to have to register each gun they own. And I want failure to do any of these things to bring a felony charge.
I want limits on how many guns a person can own. I want gun owners to have to put them in a gun safe with trigger locks on them. I want limits on how much ammunition a person can own (no more than 30 rounds sounds good to me - that's the law in Israel, did you know that?) and I want any gun that has a "magazine" to be unavailable to the public, from 9 mms to full-auto AK-47s and everything in between. If Adam Lanza's mother had been restricted to two six-shot revolver handguns with required trigger locks and gun safes and 30 rounds of ammunition total, Newtown would not have happened unless she broke the law and didn't comply - and I want anyone who doesn't comply with these restrictions charged with a felony for not complying.
I want gun shows to be stopped entirely, because how are you going to enforce the 10-day waiting period and background check there? It's like trying to get people to show proper ID at a swap meet. It's a pipe dream to think we can regulate a gun show. I want gun and ammunition sales on the internet to be completely illegal (with a felony charge if you try to do it). I want a person to have to walk into a store in person to buy a gun, and I want a national database that flags if he tries to buy more than what he can legally own (two non-magazine handguns and 30 rounds of ammunition) to prevent him from buying anything else.
These restrictions would have prevented Newtown, Columbine, Aurora, Virginia Tech, and most of the other mass gun murders in the last ten to twenty years. They would also prevent quite a few of the gang murders and drive-by shootings, since that's the loophole most gang members use these days to get their guns - the gun shows, which often bypass or "forget" the background check and ten-day waiting period. And they do not restrict people's rights unnecessarily. You can still maintain the fiction that you're "protecting yourself" with two handguns.
Constructive comments welcome. Comments that boil down to nothing more than "but, but, Second Amendment!" are not. I know that it's a free site and so you can say what you want, but I won't respond to any comment that is a But But Second Amendment comment beyond mockery or contempt.