shermann7, you must know before now, as one link was in the post you replied to, that before the 1977 hostile takeover by the NRA rebels the organization was
basically a target shooting group and not the biggest, most powerful gun lobby organization in the world. Until the hardliners took over the NRA was in favor of
gun safety laws too. So, since you've had over 40 years of the powerfully strong and deeply fraudulent NRA gun lobby push to get you to where you are now.
"The question becomes very simple in the end ... Is it better to have licensed gun dealers sell weapons or the black market ."
You seem to see conspiracy where mostly there is none, and simplicity often where complexity exists. That's a bit weird.
If you want to ignore all that and come to now what to do it's still not simple as you have black markets in many things such as tobacco, for one, where licensed dealers are plentiful.
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”