I don't know whether those two things are really at odds in the way most people imagine they are, though, nor that this is necessarily a moderate point of view.

I agree, I don't think they're necessarily at odds. However, from a completely neutral point of view, if we assume that one side is complete prohibition and the other side is zero regulation, having a little regulation is fairly "moderate" in that it's fairly well in the middle of those two extremes. That's all I mean by moderate.

The issue gun owners have with that, is it always starts with "reasonable, common sense" and then goes very quickly by degrees into "yeah, owning this kind of rifle across that state line gets you a decade in prison".

These people need to spend more time in places like California and New York, then, where moving to such a system as I casually propose here would be a substantial and meaningful decrease in regulations. I'm not arguing for a starting point, I'm arguing for the conclusion.

Licensing and permitting of rights simply converts them from rights into privileges, and gun owners in most States of the United States can just look at California and New York and say "no, thank you", so we do.

I disagree. I think it is entirely reasonable to consider this issue the right of all capable persons to own firearms. Ideally, the concept is to prevent the minority of incapable persons from owning firearms, without having to deal with the majority. The issue is that in most places (particularly the urban coasts), it is a minority of people who own firearms to begin with. Depending on how you qualify it, the portion of the population who owns firearms is on are on a similar oder of magnitude to those who are incapable of safely owning firearms. So from a policy and regulation standpoint, I think it makes more sense to whitelist capable persons who express an interest in firearms ownership than it is to construct a blacklist by checking every single person.

Unfortunately, since we don't have anything like complete healthcare coverage, let alone complete and uniform psychological coverage, we can't easily blacklist people for psychological risk factors. If we had universal healthcare with unified records and standardized evaluation frequencies and practices, we would have some hope of automatically picking up on psychologically unstable people who should not be allowed to own firearms. But we don't, and even then that's a bit on the "Big Brother" side of things.

So our best effective alternative is to implement a fairly transparent whitelist, aka a simple and straightforward licensing process. This is an alternative to the somewhat invasive, high-overhead, and generally infeasible process of checking every single person for eligibility and only marking down a blacklist of those who should not be permitted.

I wish it weren't so, but unfortunately our society is not set up in a way to catch the mentally unstable and psychologically unhealthy, or those who are otherwise incapable of safe firearms ownership. We're fragmented, and there exist loaners and drifters, people who have no community who slip through the cracks of a community's normal tendency to keep an eye on its members health and well-being.

I'm not arguing for any real restriction on firearms ownership (in terms of what can and cannot be owned). For most people (due to population concentration in coastal cities), I believe this would be a substantial decrease in restrictions. My only goal here is to ensure that people are capable of safely owning and operating their firearms. For example, basic licensing should be no more difficult than a basic safety course (which many pro-gun-rights groups would be able to offer for free, as providing such course/instruction would be licensed to any organization that demonstrates that they're doing it correctly) and cheap application to cover the administrative burden of records lookup.

As I said, I would generally reserve concealed carry, automatic and automatic-convertible, and extremely high caliber rifle ownership to the second tier, which following with the increased potential for harm I would place slightly greater restrictions on. I wouldn't require any explanation for why an individual wanted or needed this level of licensing. There would be no restrictions beyond a second level of training to cover the legal specifics of concealed carry and handling of other firearms, and confirmation from a licensed healthcare provider that the individual is psychologically capable of safely owning and operating potentially more harmful firearms. The goal here is not to restrict, in any meaningful way, what guns someone can own. I'm totally fine with people owning the assault rifles that many gun control proponents seem so afraid of. I'm just interested in ensuring that there's some basic education and safety checks happening, to reduce the potential for harm.

Particularly, I'm interested in reducing accidental firearms injury and death from children accessing parents' firearms, and from the mentally unstable using them in mass shootings. I don't really care about preventing criminals or terrorists from having powerful guns. They'll get them anyways. (We can blacklist them when we know, obviously, but that's not a big part of this.) I care about any old idiot going out, buying a gun, and leaving it on the couch when the neighbor's little kid is over.

Like almost all 5.56 NATO chambered AR-15s. They fire .223 ammunition.

And, having a high muzzle velocity and high sustained rate of fire (not to mention being a scary-looking, scary-sounding "assault weapon"), it's a lovely example of why regulating by caliber isn't necessarily the best idea. I get it, I get it.

Perhaps a better restriction would be in muzzle-feet/minute (muzzle velocity x rate of fire). Though I enjoy recreational shooting, I am really not an expert. The idea is to somehow quantify the potential for harm of a given firearm, and have reasonable restrictions to ensure that people are able to safely own and operate them.

I dunno, maybe it's all pointless. But I'd rather live in a world of zero gun control than total gun control.