That is just a cop out. If you ban them, you take them out of the public arena. Credit card companies surely must have details on purchases made from 'Joe's Gun Supplies' etc. You can trace purchases if you want. You can ban cash purchases. Communities/police already have a lot of knowledge about current gun owners. Gun stores must have CCTV. Stores must have their 'regulars' that visit frequently.
Their must be membership groups/forums/clubs. That would be a good place to start. You can outlaw advertising. You can restrict where guns are sold. Cops can actually do their jobs and do random searches (yeah it would be an outrage for white folk), like they do for drugs etc. You can have amnesties or buy backs. Every one knows someone with a gun. For the greater good of their country they can report them anonymously. Their can be stiffer penalties for possessing them. People won't be so brazen about possessing them. They would only have to be seen once with a gun then you have them.
If America really cared, they could easily take out half to two-thirds of all guns straight away.
In the UK, it is illegal to sell, buy or carry certain banned knives and you have to be over 18 to even buy one in a store. It's also an offence to carry one on your person. Doesn't stop knife crime as everyone has a kitchen but we're not going to make it easy either.
Anything has to be a start. All we hear are the same old excuses.
Not a cop out at all, just simply calling out the elephant in the room. People are quick to criticise but then offer little to no way of remedying the issue other than illogical ideals that would never work given the context.
There is no way of tracing firearms, there are no registries, tracing credit card purchases wouldn't work either. Most companies register their company as something mundane so as not to attract too much attention from financial institutions as well as billing details. Banning purchases does nothing to the 300+ million in circulation, even if you started an instant ban tomorrow it would do nothing to the ones in circulation. Making them illegal and forcing them to be taken back doesn't work either, New Zealand are seeing that as we speak and they had a fraction of the guns in circulation that the US does.
In order to implement an outright ban you would need to change the constitution, not going to happen. Hence the perspective of trying to make remedies that would work in the real world. It isn't a resignation that you cannot do anything about it, but simply a realistic approach that in order to do the things you are suggesting it would require a huge act of congress, and there just isn't support for that to work.
People have made statements about not being able to have a rational conversation, but the fact is that no one can put forward a rational way of doing it within the context of the US political system and the basis of the constitution. Hence why you see comments about 'build a wall around America... Let them shoot themselves' etc...
Whether you agree with how its structured is moot, it is the way it is and remedies have to placed within it. Rightly or wrongly.
Knife crime is at an all time high in the UK based upon the latest statistics, London being the epicenter. The laws and regulations making it difficult to obtain a knife are all in place to purchase a firearm in the USA.