In your opinion, what new benefits would requiring a license to own guns have? How will requiring this license supplement existing laws? Specifically, how would this change improve the gun "problem?"

Maybe the people you talk to who claim to be well versed in firearm safety oppose licensing requirements like this because they're well versed in existing gun laws and the culture war against ownership? Not because "muh guns!"

Your grandparents could've mail-ordered machine guns to their doorstep, no background check required. Hell, when they were kids, they could've walked into a corner store and bought a rifle with their saved up lunch money. That's what my grandpa did.

If gun laws have only gotten stricter over this time, then why are mass shootings essentially a new thing? What changed between now and then that could explain it? Living conditions have plummeted, people are poorer, breaking the poverty cycle is basically impossible, our public schools aren't getting proper funding, prisons are cruel and don't reform, college tuition has skyrocketed, healthcare has become inaccessible, women are losing bodily rights, etc.

Unfucking our society in all the ways our corporate and political elite have fucked it would do more to curb violence than anything else. Why would anyone mindlessly kill others if society's worth living in?