Every bullet fired can, potentially, kill. Do not fire at anything you do not want to kill. First lesson I got before getting a BB gun; first lesson I give others before teaching them to shoot.
Someone who can't absorb the idea that their actions will have consequences is not safe with a gun or any other weapon.
I find gun safety education and training notably absent from the gun control debate in the states. Shooting guns in summer camp and boy scouts they really drilled into you to take the thing seriously and NEVER point the barrel at anything you don’t want to kill. Now as an adult I have been around gun owners on multiple occasions who casually swing around their AR15s with the barrel passing over me and act as if I am dramatic by telling them to please not point a deadly weapon at me.
(3) is "finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot", seeing as (0) is "this is not a joke, this is not for fun, guns are not for anything but killing".
If you're teaching kids gun safety, the spirit of your delivery matters at least as much as the content.
As a liberal and a gun owner, I think it's an intentional stance by both sides. Conservatives dislike gun safety training because unless it's in carefully controlled settings (i.e. controlled by conservative groups) because they're afraid it will be used to push a "guns are bad/guns are evil" narrative. Liberals don't like it because it's pretty hard to teach effective gun safety without actually handling and shooting firearms, and when people experience that they have a tendency to a) realize that guns aren't as scary and evil as they had been led to believe, and b) think that shooting sports are kind of fun.
In the milieu from which I hail -- conservative, small town in Missouri -- gun safety was taken very seriously and you would have been thought of as a dumb redneck if you didn't get it. Always treat the gun as loaded, never point it at anything you don't wish to kill, never rely on the safety, keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to fire, etc, etc. These were drilled into my head as a child, along with never, ever, under any circumstances should you be anywhere near the gun safe without an adult present.
Also, anecdotally, I once went to the range with someone who didn't grow up around these rules, who carelessly drew his weapon across the body of someone at an adjacent stall and was immediately and forcefully reprimanded and humiliated (deservedly) by one of the attendants.
Also from small town Missouri here. You're description is certainly accurate for people going to a range, but I've seen (and participated in) impromptu shooting ranges in someone's back acre, and most people I've observed had no idea how guns work outside of movies and are perfectly willing to handle a firearm while drinking alcohol. _Some_ people do take this stuff seriously. But I think they're in the minority.
IME at least people who are really into guns are also very serious about gun safety. The problems mostly tend to come from those guys who bought an AR or pistol because it seemed cool who only take their guns out of the case once or twice a year. Unfortunately in a country the size of the US there are a lot of people in the latter group.
WRT to training, I'm of the opinion that if we as a country are going to maintain a relatively unrestricted right to bear arms (which I'm in favor of), the responsible course of action is to have broad gun safety training. Personally I'd make it part of the high school curriculum, just like english or algebra. That's where I start to hear objections from conservatives - they're totally in favor of people seeking training, after all those people probably already have an interest in guns and they're most likely seeking training from a pro-gun source, but they're concerned about broader required training being hijacked by anti-gun groups. And they probably aren't wrong, but I don't think we should ignore addressing the problem just because some people would abuse the solution.
Does a child being stabbed in the face make knives evil? Or a child being crushed by a car make vehicles evil? Guns are inanimate objects and I don't really understand the desire to assign them attributes like "evil." There are absolutely evil people who use guns to do evil things, but the same can be said for many other objects.
This is a twisted line of argument and you know it. Of course I don't think guns are literally animated by evil spirits or something similar. It's an easily understood metaphor that nearly anyone would recognize and understand, are you claiming you don't?
It's also wack to pretend that guns are just one kind among all the objects that can exist and not special in any particular way. Again it's not likely that you believe that. Guns are set aside in that they are designed exclusively for one person to cause misery and death to another, and are spectacularly good at it, and are suited for virtually no other purpose.
A knife with poison on the tip, or barbs on the blade, intended to maim and kill and unsuited for other uses? Yes, that would be evil, as a gun is. Hunting rifles and target shooting guns? Yes those are tools for another purpose that can be misused for harm, as a cooking knife or a car can. But these aren't the things we're talking about are we? I'm not a fool, or incapable of judgement and nuance, so don't try to condense this view as if I am.
Guns are exceptional, in how well made they are for their purpose, how terrible that purpose is, and how frequently they are applied to it. The fact that other things have some or all of these qualities doesn't really change the calculus.
Yes, it's unfortunate that (thanks partly to SCOTUS) the Second Amendment doesn't come with prerequisites or confer responsibilities. Owning a gun should be a privilege like driving a car, IMO, not a right. Certainly not a Constitutional right.
What you're describing is how 2A works currently, it's not like it's a wild west, the regulations around gun ownership are crazy strict. Gun owners would rejoice if guns were regulated as loosely as cars. The only thing the gov't can't really do is outlaw them completely everywhere.
Concealed carry is regulated pretty strictly. Handgun ownership is regulated less strictly, but in some states still pretty strictly. Simply purchasing a gun, especially things like bolt action rifles, shotguns, etc. is basically unregulated outside of the automated NICS check. No waiting periods, no training requirements, no persistent/renewable licensure, no insurance requirement. Much less regulated than owning a car, let alone driving a car.
I say this as someone who owns multiple handguns, an AK47, and a shotgun. I shoot probably three times a month at my local range. I've got my eye on a gorgeous P90 a friend is thinking of selling. But gun ownership regulations aren't even remotely strict unless you're looking at NFA items. Almost all the existing regulations are around carrying and transporting.
I've love to see stricter ownership regulations like mandatory recurrent training and liability insurance, coupled with loosened carrying/transporting regulations like disallowing local laws more strict than state laws, disallowing force-of-law no gun signs like they have in Texas and Chicago, etc.
All of this is true. Yet many firearms enthusiasts are still disgruntled by the current situation because they interpret the intent of the 2nd Amendment as arming the people at or near parity with the government, as a bulwark against tyranny.
And the current state of regulations very much prevents the "at or near parity" part there, very few (0?) American civilians have legal armor piercing ammunition, anti aircraft weapons, anti tank weapons etc. Meanwhile every podunk city has a militarized police with hardware that would be the envy of many 3rd world dictators, to say nothing of the Feds/various 3-letter agencies/secret police etc.
In all of those states you need a license to drive a car, but you don't need squat to walk into a shop or a gun show and walk out with weaponry in a lot of places in the US.
This is true but horribly misleading, you don't need a permit/license to buy a gun because you're effectively granted one (which can be denied) at the time of sale. You still have to fill out 4473 and pass the NICS check. There's no point to issuing people permits/licenses because all the information that would be on it is checked on every sale.
A system where you could get a firearm license and only renew it every few years would be less strict than what we have now.
Except for the gun show exclusion and family transfers, yes? There are enough holes in the system that you can;'t reliably ask someone holding a gun to show you the permit they received at sale. All cars must be registered, so failure to show registration is a clear infraction.
There are major gaps in the system. People aren't always flagged, you can have someone else buy the gun or gift it to you, or you can just go to a gun show. Imagine if you didn't need a drivers license because you're driving your friends car.
Someone who can't absorb the idea that their actions will have consequences is not safe with a gun or any other weapon.