I can easily see the problem. Working solutions are less apparent.
It's clear that guns are used in most murders (about 66% in the U.S. last year.) It is reasonable to assume that if there were no guns availablle, there would be fewer murders. However, you won't move American society from 300 million guns to no guns. Apart from it being a practical impossibility, too many regard gun ownership and easy access to the gun market as an important right. Thus, it is also a legislative impossibility. The U.S. is not the U.K., where citizens shrug their shoulders and accept restrictions on guns; half of American households own one or more guns. A law will not work if the population does not overwhelmingly support or at least accede to it.
Even more fundamentally, what's your idea worth if it doesn't render a desired effect? Just because you can imagine a solution does not mean it will do what you think or reduce the frequency of the problem you have in mind. Somebody who feels the need to restrict people's rights and implement intrusive and controlling government programs without a clear idea of how this is going to do some good, or how its good influence can be verified, is (for lack of a better term) just j@cking off with the social contract.
Obviously, if there were no guns, murder would be more inconvenient and the rate would be expected to go down. No guns (or even few guns) ain't gonna happen. So, one needs a clear idea of means and ends.
I was working under a mistaken impression: that there was at least a one-day wait for all store sales while the Federal background check was completed. Most background checks are completed immediately, while you wait, so there is no Federal delay built in. In several states there's a three-day delay on handguns, but it's on a state-by-state basis. Most have no wait. I think a day or a week's or a month's wait would be reasonable and not a burden on anybody's freedom.
However, it's worth noting that anybody who buys a gun, and then works up an angry grudge against his wife a month later, has the weapon already in hand. And, Adam Lanza of the school shootings took his mother's guns, which were bought in Connecticut, where a two-week wait applied.
