Gun Owner License

I am not sympathetic to cry babies in the USA, who fearing their favorite toys could be no longer available for sale, moan that "the 2nd Amendment guarantees our right threaten the government with firearms, which is the only reason why we still live in a democracy today." The original intent of the 2nd Amendment was guaranteeing the right to control slaves and not about freedom of speech, which is clearly an entirely different amendment.

We shouldn't be restricting what types of guns we can own, we should be restricting who is allowed to own guns. We need a standard training credential for gun ownership, something like a driver's license for guns. I do not think the average citizen should be allowed to own firearms without significant training, qualification, and accountability for what happens to weapons in their collection.

I think gun experts - people who care enough about guns to know how to maintain them and be well trained in how use them - including weekend warriors with constitutional concerns in actual militias, but also most other serious hobbyists ranging from collectors to marksman to hunters - should be able to own any firearm they want, as long as they are going to take real responsibility for what happens to and with those weapons - just like with me and my car.

A final afterthought is that if we are going to regulate hardware, the ONLY consideration should be clip size. Time and again when mass shootings are interrupted, it is usually by a bystander grappling with the shooter as they attempt to reload or switch weapons. Furthermore, there are various hacks that can convert common semiautomatic handguns into viscous fully automatic assault weapons. I see no point in controlling so-called 'assault riffles', forbidding our veterans who have been trained in their proper and expedient uses (speaking of something that could potentially interrupt a mass shooting,) while allowing paranoid untrained soccer moms to purchase hand guns, making those hand guns more likely to end up in the hands of children or criminals: