This is a pickle over here!
No one I know (here) believes that people should be allowed to buy a gun without an extensive background check, including a mental health background check.
MOST gun stores in the US DO a background check on law-abiding people like you and me.
I go in and say "I want to buy that Glock and that .45", and the guy says: sure, do you have a permit? I say no, and he gives me a form, which I fill out.
He says: I will hold your guns for you, and I will submit this form to the powers that be, and in 4 days, when the background check has cleared, I will call you.
This is the way it's done in most places.
Those of us that are law abiding, we do it, we see it as necessary and we do not get bent out of shape.
But, there are times and places where you can buy guns without a permit or a background check.
Like gun shows.
But these are mostly for hunters.
I used to go (to the shows) with my ex-husband (David), who is a hunter. (venison, pheasant, wild turkey and rabbit, all eaten!)
Or online. God knows WHY selling guns online even makes sense. Crazy teenagers who have killed their classmates in school bought guns online (Columbine boys did).
My son got his hunting license when he was 12.
He had to take classes. Safety and responsibility and handling. It was several weeks, once a week.
He used to hunt for rabbit, with David, never alone.
Had he/we been required to do more, we would have all complied.
The target shooting we did at home. We lived in rural Michigan, and David taught everyone to shoot.
My father taught me and my brothers to shoot when we were in our early teens. He'd been a rifleman in the armed forces when he was young. He had a pistol.
When we were young, the permits were not required. But things changed.
To answer your question, should people be required to take a weapons handling class?
Yes. Many people injure themselves mishandling their own gun.
Regarding a combat situation course, I do not even know what that would look like.
Since we (general civilian population) never consider being in a combat situation.
You've done military service, my dad also and my brother; but the rest of us do not ever see combat.
I would not want to take a combat situation course.
There are LOTS of weapons that are bought on the black market. That is a BIG problem.
Gangbangers do not buy their weapons at the gun shop.
Drug dealers do not buy theirs at the gun shop either.
But buying guns on the black market, by bad guys, happens everywhere in the world, not just here.