I would also support the much simpler step of setting a limit on annual sales by non FFL persons. I suspect a lot of the transfers you are concerned about occur through a smaller number of individuals. Since FFL dealers are required to do a background check, the number of transfers w/o a background check should go down.
If you don't know who has firearms, you can't implement or enforce this either.
Steve - This would be fairly enforceable. In order to sell guns efficiently, you need a marketplace (gun show or gun broker.com for example).
If you set a firm limit on number of transfers by unlicensed individuals and focused your enforcement in these areas, the number of transfers w/o background checks drops. If you look on gunbroker or go to a gun show, I suspect you will see a few unlicensed individuals operating in the grey area. Make it black and white and focus your efforts on them.
How would this stop mass shootings? Or have we moved the goal posts again?
Pretty much yes. You start with asking how to reduce firearms deaths, or mass shootings or whatever, quickly realize that not much of any policy will actually do those things, and jump right back to what you really wanted to do in the first place, which was stop regular people from buying guns. Whether quickly or slowly, in a fell swoop or so slowly no one notices, you ban guns. It's a mental quirk of certain kinds of people, to focus on the irrelevant when they can't face reality.
Like all gun threads, this one has gotten tired. Introduce any factual argument you wish, backed up with whatever data you have, and still, a few pages later the gun-controllers are right back with the same sad lines. This thread has been around the block at least twice.
Please, look at the international data, already presented earlier. Gun ownership has NO relationship to a country's level of violence. Gun laws do nothing. Canada and the US have the MOST LIBERAL gun laws in the entire New World, and are the two LEAST VIOLENT countries. Mexico? Strict gun laws, super-high violence. Same throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. All strict gun control, all unbelievably violent by US standards.
Then, look at Europe, another place with relatively liberal gun laws. Basically, anyone can jump through a few hoops and buy guns. Among the least violent countries on Earth. Then we have Japan, super-strict gun control, and super low violence. No relationship. Japanese-Americans, even to the third and fourth generations also have super-low violence rates, as do Swedish-Americans.
Violence is cultural. Violent people will be violent with whatever tools they have.