If it were up to me ALL legal gun owners in the US would be licensed.

There are few places in the US where any gun OWNERS are required to be licensed. The license refered to in US debates about "gun licenses" are a license to carry a concealed gun in public places.

Even in most places where a license is required for concealed carry it is still legal for a person who legally owns a gun to transport it, provided that it is "not immediately accessible," and in most cases is unloaded. Some states require that it be "cased," and some require that it have a "trigger lock" installed, with other rather inane and mostly useless additional provisions.

Having done some hunting and casual target shooting as a youngster, I was still required to obtain a license in Boston which was one of the two places requiring a license to have a gun in possession outside ones own home at the time. The license was needed in order to participate in the Faculty Pistol Club matches that took place at various club locations scattered around the area. I achieved (barely) an NRA Expert rating in gallery pistol during my second season.

In Army ROTC, I happened to be at the only University ROTC allowed to assign an MOS (Military Occupational Specialty Rating) to newly commissioned officers and was certified in Ammunition Maintenance when I was commissioned.

A delay for a couple of years for a Masters Degree resulting my arrival at Basic Officer Training when there was no need for Ammo Maint Officers, so I was retrained as an Armament Maintenance Officer, theoretically qualified to repair and maintain all individual weapons used by the US Army up to and including 155 mm guns and the couple of "portable nuclear armaments" (excluding nuclear ammo) then in the inventory.

On assignment, I was sent to active duty in Arizona where I was "retrained" as a Technical Operations Officer in charge of testing existing and experimental/developmental vehicles and weapons, including trucks, tanks, and armored personnel carriers and all the weapons carried by any of them.

I subsequently held a couple of "official positions" in company "gun clubs" after completing my military duties (7.5 years of them, including Reserve time).

I've done small amounts of hunting since, more for the purpose of helping some "less experienced friends" than for the purpose of taking game.

I DO NOT HAVE A STATE LICENSE TO CARRY A CONCEALED WEAPON, because the state statute imposes a requirement that you must complete a training course with a statutory minimum fee of $500 in order to get a license. Prior experience can't be counted, and you can't take a test to show that you know anything. A license is not necessary for any use I can envision, although it would be a significant "convenience" to be able to show complaince with a law that doesn't apply to my use rather than having to explain to the "authorities" what law does apply.

When the states in the US began passing their "concealed carry laws" the information pamphlets provided by the US Department of the Treasury, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, listed more than 32,000 separate, disparate, and conflicting state and local ordinances supposedly regulating possession, storage, and transport of "weapons."

To a certain extent, the only thing accomplished by "new regulations," specifically including the Federal "Brady Act," was to supercede many of those local ordinances, which was a great convenience to some legitimate owners and recreational shooters.

Prior to the Brady act, there were slightly fewer than 1,200 licensed fully automatic weapons in the US outside of the military. Most of those were in the possession of Police Departments (who were, and are, required to have a separate license for each one in their possission). Two years after the Brady Act specifically spelled out the requirements for licensing the possession of full automatic weapons, there were more than 18,000 legally licensed, with the difference mostly in private citizens' control. (FBI and BATF quoted nearly identical numbers at about the same time.)

Now that the anti-gunners have demanded "clear and specific rules" anyone with enough money can probably have a real "machine gun" or an "antitank gun," with a clear conscience and little fear of being accused of violating some trivial requirement that would previously have been "exceedingly troublesome." (For recreational purposes, of course.)

The "clear and specific" codification of requirements for licenses to carry concealed weapons has encouraged a mass demand for the licenses, and it's impossible for anyone knowledgeable of firearms and their legitimate uses to believe that the majority of these "new licenses" are held by people actually capable of knowing when and how thier "arms" can be effectively used, and when they are best simply left concealed (or at home). The principal effect of "more restrictive laws" has been to vastly increase the number of marginally qualified (but legal) persons who now feel compelled to "always have their toys close at hand."

The "clear and specific" codification of requirements for licenses has also made it significantly easier for criminals persons not qualified to legally buy and possess guns to know exactly how to "play the sytesm" to make ILLEGAL purchases successfully.

While many argue that the police here are armed and one should rely on them in any case where a weapon is necessary, it is probably difficult for many elsewhere to understand that in many places the driving time alone, for a police response, can exceed an hour. It is additionally a well confirmed fact of life that the "cops on the beat" are no more expert in the use of their weapons than many of the citizens who might feel the necessity of defending themselves (especially in areas that lack immediate local police, which are often rural with strong hunting and "varmint control" traditions.).

The police generally do have requirements for "marksmanship training," but it's simply impossible to learn much from an hour per year and 100 rounds. (I shot more than 3200 rounds in each season of the Boston Pistol League, and still barely got into consistent Expert ratings - which really aren't all that demanding.

I had occasion once to shoot a "casual match" against a relative who had just completed the FBI Marksmanship School with an "FBI Expert" rating, and on the first gallery round I doubled his score - without having fired one of my guns in the previous year. When he complained about his "issue gun" being rather poor, I traded guns and still beat him by 80 points (out of 300 possible).) I was far from able to shoot to my prior NRA Expert rating of a few years earlier at that time.

US Army training instructors have consistently agreed that it's virtually impossible to "make a marksman" out of anyone who lacks a basic familiarity with firearms prior to entering the service, and fewer than 1 out of 300 recruits is able to show the "basic abilities" for training as an "elite shooter." (And fewer than 10% of those are really "trainable" even after being offered the option.) In real marksmanship training the rule is that it takes 1,000 rounds per year to approach basic competence and maintain it. And that's just against things that don't shoot back.

In several notorious "shootouts" police or FBI have fired more than a thousand or two rounds without hitting anything. (It is difficult under pressure, but ...)

In my present urban area the Police are nearby, and I can rely on them. And there are lots of things more important than "shooting" in the business of protecting the poeple.

I've fired 3 rounds in the past 12 years, and with each of the three I humanely dispatched the varmint that was attacking a pet. The dozen or so that didn't attack went wherever they went, unmolested. (I firmly believe that at least two of the three ('possums) probably were rabid, as their behavior was "strongly atypical." The animal control people - the only ones who can legally dispose of dead animals here - didn't report whether they checked them, although I suggested they might want to.)

John