Shoot Me
You have to jump through hoops to register cars (although not nearly enough hoops to get a driver's license; they pass those out like candy); a similar system to acquire a gun only seems prudent.
But they don't kill people
True, portly men with bad hygiene will parade around in ill-fitting T-Shirts proclaiming "guns don't kill people, I do". The message with these, and similar bumper stickers, buttons, posters, etcetera, is that it's the people doing all the nasty deeds, not the guns. I don't see how such an blatantly obvious statement can be tossed around as if it were an argument, but exactly the same thing can be said about cars: cars don't get in accidents, drivers do! Yet we continue to register them, which simply makes it harder for criminals to steal cars successfully (well, not much harder, but bear with me).
Harder. So?
Anything which makes it harder for "law abiding" citizens to get a firearm is a Good Thing, in my opinion, because it means less guns and makes it harder for "Bad Guys" to get them (i.e. if you need ID and a waiting period to walk into Wally's Gun World and pick up a weapon, you'll probably thing twice if you need it for a robbery that afternoon). Of course, crimes will still be committed and people will still be shot, but one would hope the numbers will go down.
But I only shoot deer!
I don't understand the thrill of shooting a slow-moving deer from your truck parked in the ditch a few kilometers away, drinking a beer and moving on, but hey, that's just me. If you want to shoot something, take a paint-ball gun or go to the local target range (where your gun should stay) and blast a few rounds off. Naturally, though, American's feel some strange (constitutional) need to keep loaded weapons around all the time. Whatever. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
That's no fun; you suck.
Maybe so, but this is just the first step toward a Mike(tm) future, a happy world where people can only do really, really bad things to themselves (see Protect Me).