It's a knee-jerk reaction: there's a mass shooting and immediately the call is renewed for Universal Background Checks, AKA the Gunshow Loophole. This would require a background check for any transfer of a gun. Some proposed versions would even require it for lending a gun to a member of the family. The problem with this as a solution to gun violence is that there has yet to be a single mass shooting where either the shooter(s) passed a background check or the gun existing law was broken for the shooter to obtain the gun. In Columbine, the grandfather of school shootings, a cousin bought the guns and was charged for it. In the recent Dayton shooting, the gunman was legally able to buy guns but a friend made the purchases so his parents wouldn't know. It should be pointed out that the guns used in the vast majority of drug and gang related crimes were obtained illegally.
It should also be pointed out that during the Obama administration the ATF tried to exploit "gunshow loophole" and the "dark web" to buy guns. They were unable to make any purchases while posing as someone who would not pass a background check.
So right off the bat you have a disconnect between gun owners and people who want "common sense gun legislation". If universal background checks won't stop mass shootings then why are people pushing so hard for them?
Many of the people pushing for this are doing it reflexively. They've been told that this is needed all of their adult lives going back to Bill Clinton in the 1990s. They never stopped to examine the effectiveness of background checks because people they trust have already told them that these work.
But some people have to know how ineffective these would be. Why are they still pushing for it? What will they gain from them?
The most charitable motive is that they hope to slow the number of gun purchases by making it difficult enough that people give up on the purchase or don't bother in the first place. Opposition to this is the same as opposition to obstacles to abortion. The advocates worry that allowing any anti-gun legislation to pass will make it easier for stricter legislation. Once a background check is mandated then it's fairly simple to extend the time needed for it. In California and other places where local law enforcement has to sign off on concealed carry permits, some authorities have refused to ok a single application turning a formality into a roadblock. That could well happen to background checks.
The real scare for gun owners is that when a background check has to be performed on all transfers, that gives the government a list of gun owners that could be used for confiscation. While this is unlikely in the US, it is how England was able to disarm its population. In England, every gun had to be registered. That made it easy for the government to ask every registered gun owner for their gun.
At its heart, this is an emotion vs reason argument. People who want background checks are not acting rationally and are unwilling to listen to reasons why this would be ineffective. Rather than listening to gun-owners' objections, they see the gun-owners as either tools of the NRA or "being willing to sacrifice childrens' lives". Beign talked down to like that just makes the gun owners dig in deeper with their opostition.
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