Sorry lad, I have to bite your head off to help you understand how we look at it.
Something thats always struck my mind when these sort of debates; Why don't you illegalise assault weapons and automatics? Surely these are killers as we have seen quite recently at the Conneticut and Cinema shootings. What the hell is an American citizen going to do with an automatic weapon anyway? Shoot at alien space-invaders?
Automatic weapons are nigh impossible to get in the US (Due mostly to the fact that the people who you go to to get them consist of an office of a dozen people, who attempt to cover the entire nation, and not just for automatic weapons either. They also take the nation's applications for silencers and short barreled rifles.). You have to submit a $200 tax stamp, get approval from your local police chief, and then wait upwards of six months for the aforementioned office to approve you. You can then go pick up your pre-1986 manufactured automatic weapon.
Further, were it not for the evil 'assault weapon' used in the Aurora theatre shooting, many more people would have died.. Why is this?
His 100-round magazine, not intended to be used in situations involving rapid fire, jammed. Had he been stuck with a 'normal' magazine, he'd have simply been able to reload after 10, 15, 20, or 30 rounds. (Depending upon which absurd legislation was involved.)
Also, what would I do with an automatic weapon?
Look at it. Shoot it at targets. Have it as a conversation starter. You see, we don't have to need something, to be able to own it.
'Put security guards in schools, hospitals, etc' isn't that just going to make the new American population fear for their lives? or even 'Guns are for protection' If there was no guns in the first place there would be no need for protection, is that not true? Even the suggestion of Security guards searching people, is it not worrying that it has reached the stage where people are even considering this option? All of them are ridictulous.
Oh, indeed, all options are ridiculous. But life is the same way.
However, all the options are becoming less and less necessary given that, over the past two decades, crime has dropped, despite the rise in gun ownership.
I understand all this blah-blah about the constitutional rights and all that malarky, but whats more important, a right written down hundreds of years ago when having a weapon was necessary, or someones life? Most of the world surivives without insane assault rifle-wielding peasantry - why not the US? Maybe just allowing bolt-action rifles for instance, no one is stupid enough to run into a building and even attempt to kill anybody with a slow-reloading rifle, surely thats preserving life and preventing death, as well as fulfilling your constitutional right.
If we want to get into that...
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains or slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take but as for me; give me liberty or give me death!" - Patrick Henry
And no, I don't think bolt action weaponry would cover our constitutional right. You're aware of what a New York reporter has done recently, no? He put out a map of all legal pistol owners in the city, and by doing so, he's condemned many people to, at the very least, having their property taken. Surely, in order to fulfill his constitutional right, yet keep the public safe, he should be limited to a printing press, and banned from using the internet.
I mean, when you think about it, we're going up against the Constitution either way.
It's quite obvious the current Gun laws in the US are inadequate and severely flawed and really do need revising. Isn't the whole point of American's having guns is to preserve life? All I've seen is early death.
Indeed they are flawed. It's time we permit concealed carry without a license, reduce the NFA to restrict only automatic weapons, increase the number of people who check off the NFA tax stamps, and begin to bring down the crime rates in the various large cities, by fighting the gang culture present there.
Also, we'll probably want a way to fight the rise in crime that's about to happen in NYC.
Forgive any half-formulated arguments I may have here, as I'm rather tired, and can barely keep a single train of thought at the moment, much less type things out like I usually intend to.