The vast majority of gun owners have never used a gun in an illegal activity
Completely irrelevant. The vast majority of drivers don't drive when they're drunk, but we still have DUI laws that apply to everybody.
The reason we have them is because there was a clear pattern where impaired drivers were involved in more accidents that were more fatal, just like legal gun owners and unjustifiable murders.
And of course because the alcohol lobby didn't think to start a death cult to fight DUI laws to maintain their profits.
enthusiast communities exemplify safe gun use
Entirely optional. The pro-gun community might go online to tut about poor trigger discipline or unsafe storage but they (or the people representing them) staunchly oppose any laws that actually make these things a requirement.
often get a person forcibly disarmed or assaulted to even negligently put another person down the line of the barrel.
At a range or in your imagination. They don't rush out from behind a couch to scold a domestic abuser for sweeping his wife.
The issue at hand isn't that gun ownership is legal, the issue is that a (possibly undiagnosed) sociopath or potential psychopath was able to get a firearm
Congratulations, welcome to gun control. Preventing that is 100% the goal of gun control, has always been the goal of gun control and has been hugely effective outside of America.
Generally, this is through gun licensing* with applicants needing to demonstrate they know how to safely store* and operate*, undergo a background check* and often be a member in good standing at a range for at least 6 months*.
These laws also take into consideration the risk of different guns* with semi-automatic weapons involving increased scrutiny* given that they're the weapon of choice for impulse killings, mass murder and armed robbery.
And of course, this comes with actual punishments* for anyone caught endangering others with their firearms, rather than just getting the frowning of the lifetime from the people who enabled them.
Unfortunately, everything marked with a * is opposed by the pro-gun community who would rather just keep selling guns to criminals, abusers, extremists and 80% of mass shooters instead of making the "responsible" part of "responsible gun owner" mandatory.
But we all know the talking point you're working towards -- the "it's a mental health problem" bullshit excuse.
Of course the goal of that excuse is to demand something impossible is done before you will even consider gun control -- in this case, accessible mental healthcare for every man, woman and child in America that can instantly cure them of complex problems far beyond even the most cutting edge medical science, so completely that they will never relapse for even a minute, delivered within a budget of $0.
But do you know what you're actually doing? Admitting that the American public are simply not healthy enough for such permissive gun laws to be safe.
So how about we just fix the gun laws without the gun lobby's stamp of approval and when the pro-gun crowd has finished building their impossible mental health system, they can have them back.
After all, they've insisted that they (and they alone) have had the solutions for 25 years now and the only thing they've done is dug the country a deeper hole in the name of profit.
