Gunowners don't like licenses because if the goverment can decide who owns guns, then they'll use it to keep guns out of the hands of people they don't like.

New York City abuses its may-issue system to prevent anyone from obtaining a license to carry concealed, unless you pay high bribes to the police (or are police).

Most gun laws disproportionately affect the poor. Polities such as New York State require people undergo a certified training course before they can purchase a handgun (police excepted of course). I see people complaining that a single day of voting is insufficent, that their hourly job doesn't leave them a window to go vote. This is much worse with a carry course, where you have to perfectly attend multiple classes that you're paying hundreds of dollars to attend. It's a steep cost to exercise a right.

These are addressable problems: all handgun licenses should be shall-issue if you meet the requirements, mandated training courses should be free and people should be compensated for their time like jury duty.

As for the "you shouldn't even talk about gun laws unless you can tell a .45 from a 9 mm in the dark" part/is that really so unreasonable, minus the hyperbole? When Republicans use phrases like "If it's a legitimate rape, the body has ways of shutting it down" and then try to claim that life starts when the heart does, is it OK that they are wildly wrong about the human body and are trying to legislate it?

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?