I agree with a good deal of what you said, but not everything.
1) Mental health is not a red herring. You don’t see the correlation between shutting down mental institutions in the 1970s and a huge spike in prison populations since in the USA? It’s been estimated that nearly 40% of all prisoners in America would be in mental institutions instead of prisons if the institutions still existed in the numbers this country had before 1970. Also, who in their right mind goes into schools and shoots children, teachers, and support staff? Who in their right mind stands on the roof of a casino and shoots 50+ people attending a country music concert? Who in their right mind guns down fellow soldiers at Fort Hood indiscriminately? Who in their right mind goes into a Florida night club and guns down innocent people out for a night on the town? Who in their right mind walks into a church and guns down worshipers (South Carolina/Texas, etc.?
In CT, you are required to take a one-day gun safety training course (they actually use unloaded pistols in the training and show you how to hold the weapon, how to load a magazine, and proper ways to handle and unload the weapon, etc.) AND demonstrate to the certified instructor that you can handle and fire a pistol safely in the range after the classroom training. If you can’t do it, you don’t receive a certificate required to get a pistol permit. In CT you must have a pistol permit in order to legally purchase firearms. You are required to pass a written test sponsored by the NRA as well while in the gun training course. It’s not a difficult test, but there were people in my class who did not pass.
I am totally against holding a legal gun owner liable for a gun that’s stolen and used in a crime, which is what you’re advocating for. I don’t think it’s legal to do that to begin with and second of all how about holding the criminal who stole the weapon and used it to commit a crime responsible?