Yes, just as we have to take driver's training to drive a motor vehicle, we should have to take weapons training to own deadly weapons. And just as we have to take proficiency tests, both practical and written, to obtain a license to operate motor vehicles at various levels and degrees of expertise and risk, so too we should have to prove our proficiency to achieve various levels of weapons ownership licensing.
If you want to carry a pistol on your hip like a cop, you should have to be just as proficient as any cop at how and when you can and cannot take it out and fire it, and at hitting your target without hitting bystanders. And you'd better be willing to wear a body-cam with your pistol, and be willing to accept liability if you screw up. Because that's what the cops are going to have to do, soon enough.
But if you want to use a rifle or shotgun for hunting, you certainly would not have to go through that much training. Mostly, you'd just need to know safety and wildlife hunting laws and procedures. And register your firearms, of course.
If you want assault weapons, you should be able to show why you need them. Which I doubt most people could. But they should be allowed with a special license for those who have a real need of them.
It's simple reason, really. The idea is that we want to keep the guns away from the people who are likely to abuse them: drunks, drug addicts, ragers, brawlers, stalkers, criminals, the mentally unstable, blind people, etc.,. It's not rocket science. A good system could be set up, but first we have to topple the sacred cow of the NRA. And the insanity that has been spawned by it.
