Now that is a fun one.
Familiar to be sure. But still fun.
It is a tired, worn, and silly claim that if 'they don't know guns' then they are disqualified to talk about gun violence in America. Even if it was their 6-year old who got blown away at school. Disqualified....because they don't know the kinetic energy of the bullet that killed her.
It is nonsense. I have seen it in any number of discussions with gun-nuts. They claim that if one doesn't know the sear tensile-strength on a Sig Sauer trigger assembly.....well then, "thy don't know guns'...and thus have no place in gun-violence debates.
The GunNuttery-world likes to hide within nomenclature, jargon, and technical manuals to boo-bird anyone who is skeptical of America's gunnut-culture, and the damage it causes.
It is amusing. Although, to be fair, I don't intend to use the term 'Gun Nut' in a pejorative manner.
IMHO
That is a straw-man. And the poster knows the query is unanswerable today.
But the undeniable reality is that 99+% of firearms in private hands were, at one time, "legally owned".......by the manufacturer, by the distributor, by the retailer, by the first purchaser of record.
How it then became an 'illegal' weapon is anybody's guess.
So, that brings us back to the suggestion that all firearms....ALL.....carry with them, from the moment their assembly at the factory is finished and certified.....a "strict liability" burden on the owner-of-record.
Yes, that means the factory carries it first, then it is transferred to the distributor, then the retailer, then the retail buyer. If that firearm causes harm in that chain of ownership then the entity who was the OOR at that moment....holds the liability responsibility. The Owner-of-Record is the entity that America must focus on in order to mitigate this uniquely American plague of gun violence.
Thus, in my opinion, America will see an exponential increase in care, concern, and accountability in our firearm ownership. And thus fewer of those once 'legal' firearms will end up in 'illegal' hands.
To be sure, it won't eliminate all gun violence. But with hundreds of millions of firearms in private-hands....we can only address our violence with incremental change and time. It is the best we can do. Keep making changes that increase the burden of responsibility for bringing this high lethality, easily concealed, portable, and easily used tool into our society. Guns are different. Different than any other tool we employ in our society.
IMHO