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Notes -
My fantasy system is one where the right to buy almost any gun is licensed, but the licensing procedure is devolved to a local County Level gun club.
Virtually every gun owner I know thinks that some people shouldn't have guns, they just don't trust the government to make that determination. The anti-gun fanatics and the local range guys would agree on 95-99% of cases, but we can't get there because of agency and trust problems. If the anti-gun crowd granted gun owners the right to self-police gun licensing they would get most of what they wanted without a fight.
This is why one of my favorite policies is when I went for my CCW, I had to write down three references. At the time I thought, wow, what kind of dumbass policy is this, all I need to do to have a gun is have three friends? Then I heard of so many people who either can't find three people who will say they should have a gun and never apply; or who somehow manage to write down people who, when contacted, actively say they shouldn't have a gun! And while that's a minority of the people who shouldn't have guns, they definitely shouldn't have guns.
I'd want to see the same thing with gun clubs. To have a ccw or to buy certain classes of firearms, you have to be a member in good standing and spend time at your local gun club. This would require interacting with other people at the local gun club, who would naturally notice shitbirds or whackadoos or terrorists or the criminally insane in those interactions much more effectively than will the government.
Oh, great, bring small-group politics into it, that'll surely make things good.
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