Still remember when the first three shot style Shot Gun became legal. Stop and think,a double barrel shot gun was the Cat's Meow for any Hunting.

Still remember how difficult it was to purchase a hand gun. In the County that I grew up in,only a peace officer or a deputy was allowed to have one.

The 1886 Winchester

came from our Grand Father. Now in a Family Members Collection. As well as a earlier model.

and needed to be taken to a Smithie in order to pull the plug. Remember our local Color Guard doing this.

World War 2 foreign long guns being advertised in Field and Stream as well as other so called He Man Magazine's back in the day.

single-fire rifles and shotguns for hunting, and ONE revolver-type handgun registered in their name if they want it for self-defense. One per person.

If you are on a battlefield, it's different. If you are a member of a SWAT team or law-enforcement, it's different.

There certainly should be a prohibition on selling or possessing assault weapons, and semi-automatic weapons should be restricted in some fashion, but there are firearm collectors and sportsmen (target and hunting, and even biathlon) that legitimately have multiple firearms. I know hunters who have multiple rifles, and a collector who has a relatively large number of historical firearrms dating back to as far as the revolution. Provision should be made for these types of firearm owners. I’d also like to see more thorough background checks for both firearm and ammunition purchases, whether from retail sellers, gun shows, or private purchasers.

I can understand collecting and using multiple rifles and shotguns; they are less easy to conceal, and it would be hard for a shooter to carry and manage more than two or three of them at once in a massacre-type situation. I'd restrict concealable handguns to one personal firearm per owner to avoid shooters carrying multiple guns in every coat pocket.

As far as collecting - does there exist a device that can securely disable a gun without damaging its worth? Like a plug that locks inside the barrel, or a way to remove the trigger?

It's well past time.

For his 2016 book “Rampage Nation,” Klarevas collected data on every gun massacre — which he defines as six or more people shot and killed — for the 50 years before 2016. His aim was to see whether there was any change in the number of gun massacres while the 10-year federal ban on assault weapons was in place.

He calls the results “staggering.” Compared with the 10-year period before the ban, the number of gun massacres during the ban period fell by 37 percent, and the number of people dying from gun massacres fell by 43 percent. But after the ban lapsed in 2004, the numbers shot up again — an astonishing 183 percent increase in massacres and a 239 percent increase in massacre deaths.

Klarevas says that the key provision of the assault weapons bill was a ban on high-capacity magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds. “We have found that when large capacity mags are regulated, you get drastic drops in both the incidence of gun massacres and the fatality rate of gun massacres.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/02/15/its-time-to-bring-back-the-assault-weapons-ban-gun-violence-experts-say/?utm_term=.b00713acd7fe

So, your memory must be failing.