If carry licenses worked like driver's licenses, the premise of this article wouldn't even exist. The reason they use this workaround and the reason it hasn't been closed off is that the tycoons could not have their armed security without it.

I am all in on licensing guns like we do cars, with mandatory tests and insurance requirements.

Interesting that - a license is not required to purchase a car, nor is a car required to be registered unless operated on public streets. Even then, there are exceptions.

Insurance is not required in many states. In Virginia, for instance, one may put up a bond in lieu of maintaining insurance. There are no states to my knowledge where insurance is required to merely own a car.

Oh, and the penalty for failing to do any of the above is like $35.

I don't really care about making their licensing regimes exactly the same.

I just want people who love their guns to start paying back the rest of us for the externalities of living in a society drowning in those guns.

My point is that what you suggested above is significantly less onerous than the requirements already in place.

As for insurance - most people who carry firearms regularly actually do have insurance to cover potential legal defense costs. Liability insurance doesn’t make much sense because the potential issues there are criminal, not civil.