I'll preface this with some stuff because I don't think I qualify as a gun enthusiast, but I am technically a gun owner. I own a single shotgun, which I've actually bothered to take out and fire on a total of two occasions, and so far only with target loads. So my credentials as a gun enthusiast are, at best, dubious. But I do have a gun and I am the owner of it. I don't hunt, carry a gun with me (openly or concealed), engage in target practice, or use a gun for self defense (if some improbable home-invader were to attack me for some reason and actually gave me enough time to get everything ready for shooting at him, I would necessarily have had enough time to resort to methods that I am actually good at). Some day in the future I might put it to more use, but thus far it mostly just sits there looking pretty (I do keep it clean). The reason I bought it was that I find shotguns interesting and wanted to have one. Anyway, I'll note that on the topic of gun control, I have seen a lot of sketchy arguments and lazy use of statistics from both sides, and I've also heard reasonable arguments from both sides. Like everyone else, I have my opinions on the various issues involved, but when actually discussing these things, I make a point of noting that while I don't mind exploring the details, the numbers, the various comparisons, factors, interests, etc., none of that is what really motivates me. And it's not my own personal shotgun either: I bought that less than two years ago and my stance has been the same since long before that. I do not find gun ownership to be vital to me personally. While I'm not really extraordinary, I am in some ways rather fortunate. I live in a very safe part of the country, have never held a job that puts me at a particular risk of violent attack, have no real enemies, and have not had the misfortune to otherwise become the target of violent criminals. I am healthy and a bit bigger than the average man, so while I don't think I'm especially intimidating, I imagine that I don't look like the easiest victim out there. I also have accumulated a lot of martial arts experience, and while I don't make silly claims about being some sort of super badass, I am skilled enough to make myself a dangerous target, should the day come that some stupid criminal were to randomly pick me and attempt to attack me head-on. Being that I'm not particularly proficient with a gun, that I am particularly proficient with my hands, and that in the extremely unlikely event that someone did attack me it might be by some means I couldn't see coming at all (like stabbing me in the back or running me over with a car, for instance), the idea of a gun for self defense just doesn't seem to make much sense. It's too much of a corner case. For me. In my current situation. And that situation doesn't apply to everyone else! In fact, there are presumably people out there who could check the opposite box from all the ones I checked. There are small, fragile-looking people who don't have martial arts training, live in crime-ridden areas and have, one way or another, attracted the attention of bad people. And I'm not going to be the one to tell such people that they cannot have the tools they need to protect themselves. I'm not going to tell them, "Well, I don't need a gun for self defense, so neither do you." I'm not going to be in favor of the government disarming them on the basis that someone else misused guns. I could try to articulate exactly why I feel that way and why the matters to me, but I think people get that, so I won't go overboard with it. But I just have to note that this principle, for me, takes priority over the other ones. So if people want to argue the numbers and the innumerable nuances when it comes to guns and the law, that's perfectly fine and perhaps necessary. Like I said, I have my own opinions, but even when it comes to my own opinions, my principle of not stripping vulnerable people of the tools they use to protect themselves eclipses everything.
Oh, one more thing, but I want to be very clear that although what you've said reminds me of a couple of other conversations I've had, I'm not criticizing you and don't actually consider to you be guilty of doing the thing that I'm about to mention, even thought it is really going to seem like it because it's similar. It often happens with friends and acquaintances who want either much stricter gun laws or to ban guns entirely that whenever there is a high-profile criminal incident of gun violence, a psycho spree killer or whatever, that this event, or others like it, is held up as the example of why change needs to be made. In short, they want to throw dead kids in my face. They also, sometimes almost within the same breath it seems, call for "rational discussion." Well, these extreme, high-profile atrocities are not the statistical norm. They are not the majority of gun usage. They are not even the majority of criminal gun usage or bad gun usage. So yeah, we can try to have a rational discussion and try to weigh the good against the bad, although I contend that it isn't really possible to do that in any rigorous, quantitative sense. It's going to come down to opinion and to how we value certain things. But a single, exceptional atrocity isn't a good basis for that discussion. To draw a parallel, if we wanted to have a thorough assessment of automotive safety, we'd want to look at lots of different scenarios, get counts of how often those incidents occur and what the details are surrounding them, etc. A lot of really technical stuff. We wouldn't find the deadliest car crash ever and then go on to talk about everything in terms of it. That isn't realistic. However disastrous that one crash was, there were probably a lot of other incidents that didn't resemble it at all, but which we'd also want to account for if our goal is to understand the issue. I am, by no means, an expert on guns or on any of the ways they are used and misused. But I know enough to know that there's a lot more to it than just one high-profile case.
Anyway, I doubt my answers will be satisfactory, but I'll try...
1) I have no idea. I do not consider myself even close to knowledgeable enough to be making the decision as to how many rounds a gun should be allowed to hold or how often it should be allowed to fire. I've heard that states have gradually been pushing restrictions more and more, that they'll manage to pass one law that says X rounds is the maximum, and then, years later, they'll act like X is some absurdly high number that no one should need, and that the new limit should be Y. And so on. I do not have details of this and I don't know if that portrayal was related to me honestly. It's not really something that I've looked into. I can say that when I bought my shotgun, it came with a device to restrict the number of shells that could be loaded into it, which I didn't install. It can hold five shells but I guess in some other state, they're only allowed to load three, so the company ships them with these things to block off the end of the chamber. I forget what it is called. In my limited understanding, a lot of the popular resentment to restrictions on capacity comes from gun "sports" people who do trap shooting, hunting, bullseye shooting, and whatnot. I don't really have a dog in that fight either way.
2) I don't really know about this one either. I had to pass a background check. Unless background checks are preventing people who legitimately need guns for protection from getting them, I don't see why it would be a problem. I do not know how effective background checks are. For my purposes, I saw nothing wrong with the background check, but like I said, what goes for me may not go for everyone else.
3) I don't really think that this is practical. Just one example: where I work, at one point they found a rifle in a basement. It was like 150 years old and no one knew who put it there or when. It still works. So while I'm not necessarily opposed to paper trails in every case and think they could be good, the idea of every gun in the entire country having a paper trail? It's just not going to happen. There are a whole lot of guns out there.