I have lots of problems here. Remember I am a member of those horrible horrible liberal people who want everyone's guns taken away. I am one of the sheeple, the herd, the stupid ones who hate the constitution - ok?
So you want a body of people that are the furthest from the individual as can be. You want a government that can by nature have no understanding of the community it is now managing, to make up the rules for that community. You want an absolutely one size fits all set of rules - and that set of rules governs how we as individuals are to be "allowed" our fundamental right to keep and bear arms. You want people who were elected through various savory and not so savory ways, who act often times in their own and their monitary sponsor's best interest rather than their consituants to decide what "classes" of people are entitled to their right to keep and bear - for whatever reason they wish to.... keep and bear. As an example, suppose we have a mildly autistic man living in Montana minding his own business (which is what autistics most often do). Previously, a person who was judged autistic after the fact shot up a church and so, the art of legislation being what it is - autism is lumped into the rule set on who can and cannot purchase a firearm. Now this autistic farmer is incapable of protecting his sheep from coyotes and is dissalowed the right to protect his family in a place that the police would have trouble even finding let alone arriving in time to help the family who comes into contact with a tweeker bent on getting at the family's coffee can fund.
Now this is a made up example but it is the kind of thing that happens when our coumunities are micromanaged from afar. And you want that micromanagement for a fundamental and at times rather essential right.
Furthermore, you want the Feds to be in the middle of the transaction between a lawful gun seller and a lawful gun buyer. Contrary to La Pierre's recent rant, government is in the middle of most if not all transactions. The state is there between the guy selling and the guy buying a car, or a home, but the government in those situations are more local - state or even smaller localities. The regulations and requirements may well be overbearing and may well need to be different depending upon those locations.
Now you say you don't care about the Federal government being involved in manditory training of weapons use. Fine, but you by nature of your other answers want THAT to be a federal matter as well. This could easily be called infringement and if you think that people are upset over the provisions of Obama care, imagine what it would be like to demand each individual with a firearm - no matter where he comes from, no matter how his family is brought up with firearms or without, no matter the individual situation of each gun owner he will have to have ongoing certification. Beyond even that, these certifications will cost money. Charging money in order to exercise one's right is a dangerous if Constitutionaly sketchy endeavor. We liberals run into all sorts of flack when we are challenged with the constitutionality of a contemplated action and we respond with "I don't care".
I argue all day long with the gun nuts who have imaginations pertaining to the jack booted thugs marching door to door searching for guns. They are foolish and irrational because as I have long said, government has other ways to handle such things. But their way depends upon a paper trail. Given a universal paper trail to each and every lawful gun in the United States could really, actually enable the government to collect every weapon. That is a slippery slope that has meaning. One thing perhaps to keep those paper trails short, to the county or perhaps the state but beyond that is a genuine hazard to our overall freedom.
Now you mention operating a car, and there is no comparison, we need not hide for any reason our ownership of a vehicle. We learn to drive so that we can manage our vehicles in a concerted way - so everyone knows what the signs mean and which way we are to point our headlights but even so, that management is left to the states.
Your focus is in my opinion incorrect. The gun guys tend to manuver the conversation away from the mass shootings and into the individual gun violence because they know their argument will succeed - an individual bent upon killing another will find a variety of ways of doing it and taking his gun from him will not deter injury to another. If we focus on the mass shootings we always hold the cards. A guy intent upon killing a number of people at once has limited solutions, poison or bombs are about it and both are regulated. The point is that individual killings don't get much national airplay and it is hard to dismiss them as "well he would have done that anyway, even if he didn't have a gun" doesn't work.
In my opinion, the POINT of new gun legislation is to prevent, curtail or limit the ability of the genuinely wacked to kill 10 or 20 people. So far, aside from your requirement of background checks, nothing you are asking for will have much effect on the day to day individual gun violence we see. In order to do that we would have to radicaly change our culture - hardly likely.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think that persons convicted of armed robbery and the like are elegible to obtain a firearm now.
And there is always a "body of people" that propose, write and finally pass legislation, people are always in the loop.
