It started with the JFK assassination in 1963; LBJ became Prez and immediately sought national gun registration & licensing of owners.
Not until 1968 did the MLK and RFK assassinations give Johnson the momentum to ram through GCA-68, giving us the FFLs and 4473 forms we live with to this day. But it fell far short of LBJ’s grand registration scheme and he fumed bitterly even as he signed GCA-68 into law.
Meanwhile, the news media & Hollywood smeared gun owners as dangerous psychopaths and crazed blood sport enthusiasts.
But in 1983 Ronald Reagan repealed the import bans on surplus guns and came out foursquare for the 2nd Amendment.
Gun ownership became mainstream from that point.
Notice that Biden doesn’t say a word about his own plans to seize semiautos using the police. And he has told Beto to zip it after Beto warned AR-15 buyers, “No sense buying it when you’re just going to have to turn it in.”
Johnson and GCA 1968 cost me a cherry PPK and Browning Hi-Power. Couldn’t legally bring them back from Germany where I was stationed in late 60’s. I’ll forever loathe the son of a bitch.
Actually, it started long before LBJ - the National Firearms Act was passed in 1934. We're still dealing with the completely arbitrary & mostly nonsensical restrictions the NFA imposed on law-abiding Americans (including minimum barrel length/overall length restrictions for rifles & shotguns, expensive taxes on firearms mufflers, etc.). Just ask Mrs. Randy Weaver...