This guy's comment over on Iheartchaos.com (http://www.iheartchaos.com/post/40695349…) is more of the level headed thinking we need in government:

Rivethead • 3 hours ago

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You have to pass a proficiency test to get your driver's license.
If you're unfit to drive a car, you don't get a license.
If you have a license and demonstrate a lack of responsibility with it, you have it taken away.
Why not do the same with guns?

Make it so you have to pass tests, a background check, and a psyche eval in order to get a license to own guns. Once you have that license, one should be free to purchase guns without having to register them. That way you're keeping them out of the hands of the people who are the most likely to misuse them - just like with anything else which requires a license.

"What if someone steals guns from someone who has a license and commits a crime with them?"
You mean, what if someone gets guns illegally? You mean, like they do now?
Well, you arrest them, prosecute them, and jail them.
A licensed gun owner, however, would be legally obligated to report to the authorities any and all weapons that are stolen from them.
The Sandy Hook shooter acquired his weapons illegally when he murdered his own mother and then stole the weapons. Last time I checked, murder and theft were criminal activities.

"And if his mother was prevented from owning those firearms or was restricted to low-capacity magazines, things would have turned out differently."
Speculation and conjecture. I could just as easily say that the shooter would have acquired them elsewhere through other illegal means.
In regards to the magazines:
Anyone who practices enough can change out a magazine in about 1.5 seconds.
Anyone with sufficient knowledge and access to any set of machines found in junior high school shop class can manufacture their own magazines; they're quite simple devices, really.
The shooter could have also opted to carry more guns and simply dropped them once their magazines were depleted.

"What if someone who is licensed to own a gun gives them to someone who not?"
Then you take away their license, arrest them, prosecute them, and jail them.

"But the gun license you describe would not prevent dangerous criminals and sociopaths from acquiring them."
NOTHING is going to prevent a determined criminal or sociopath from acquiring guns illegally. You could make gun ownership punishable by death, and the Bloods will still be slaughtering innocent 10-year-olds in MS13 territory. That's why these people are criminals - they don't have any respect for the social norms that everyone else does which ensures the safety and security of mutually-interested citizens. Laws do NOT dictate morality. If they did, we never would have survived the Bronze Age where it was law to publicly execute your own child for talking back to you.

You don't blame the car when a teenager gets drunk and turns them self and their 3 friends into highway slurry.
You don't blame the pen for your spelling errors.
You don't blame the roulette wheel for losing your money.

There is a solution to this problem, but punishing the hundreds of millions of responsible citizens for the horrible things done by a handful is not the answer. I'll gladly make concessions for the sake of public safety and to get people to shut the fuck up, but the "solutions" offered by most gun opponents won't do anything to stop gun crimes and they won't do anything to stop criminals from buying guns through criminal channels.

Regulate if you must, but use reason, logic, and and do not remove our rights.
[/Soap Box]

I am a proud liberal who abhors the NRA, Glen Beck, and all the rest of that mess. I know from personal experience what it's like to be shot at, what it's like to watch somebody die from bullet wounds, and what it's like when gang members come to your house and try to murder you. I am responsible, law abiding, and I own guns.

If you want to have a frank conversation about guns, you should stop promoting the deliberate misinformation and the polarization. This isn't a conversation that is in any way helped by the constant us vs. them/red vs. blue/"reasonable" vs. "gun nuts" narrative that this article promotes. I do not mistake my perception of "need" for a good basis for legislation of things that I have no interest or working knowledge of and apparently that's the key difference between me and the people who made up the tiny core group of this rally.

And lets be honest, once you disregard the usual collection of homeless people, downtown bus-stop layabouts, and OWS holdouts that your photographer cleverly relegated to the background with a shallow downward angle and some tight framing, this group was indeed tiny. I was there and I can count higher than 100.

I eagerly await the day that the Stranger posts an article about the rest of us, the socially conscious gun owners, written by somebody who is capable of understanding the difference between fun and terrifying. Somebody who can put two sentences about a gun owner together without making their subject sound like a dangerous, unhinged lunatic. I love the stranger, and I am waiting for that article, but deep down I know it'll never happen because as much as you love to rail against conservative news outlets for their biased, fact-lacking narratives you cannot seem to bring yourselves to do any different.