> How many people die from mass shootings per year? Now compare that to the number of people that die in car accidents.
I mean, to take my car out in public, I'm required to have a license, registration, inspection, various safety devices, and follow a variety of usage rules.
You can still buy or build a car without any of that for use on your own property or other private places that allow it, but there's no practical barrier to you taking it out on public roads other than the risk of being pulled over and ticketed.
Yes, but there are still over 40,000 deaths per year in car accidents in the US alone. If car accident deaths had the same emotional reaction as mass shootings, people would demand the government setup checkpoints at every intersection to "better monitor the drivers"
All of that came out of law enforcement whining that cars made pursuits and catching criminals too difficult back in the day, turning one of the most fundamental freedoms, (freedom to locomote) into a government gated privilege. Laying the foundation for an eventual effective surveillance state.
Unless "do whatever you want on private property and do a pretty wide range of things in public with a trivially easy to get license" is your policy goal you probably don't want to bring up the car comparison.
We already generally subject firearms stuff to licensing if you want to have your armaments with you in public. Some states have basically none. Some states have onerous regulation. We'll split the difference.
Across the whole nation we have a fairly substantial set of restrictions on what you can and can't own, regardless of whether or not you only ever use it on private property (there are no such restrictions for cars).
So the net effect would be mostly no change in public and a massive net loosening of restrictions in private.
Personally I'm fine with this. But I think you'll probably be clamoring to have the status qou back as soon as your local extremists start posting youtube videos of 14yos firing mortars at their summer BBQ.
I mean, to take my car out in public, I'm required to have a license, registration, inspection, various safety devices, and follow a variety of usage rules.