Whether you come down on the right side or the wrong side of the current gun control debate, one thing you can be fairly certain of is that you don't know what the hell you're talking about.
Conspicuously absent from the debate is any mention of ordinary citizens forming an alliance to protect their constitutional right to freedom, which is what the Second Amendment is all about. The Founding Fathers considered even Federal government potentially hostile to freedom. A standing army was seen (back then, anyway) as a potential threat, due to both the expense of maintaining one (taxes), and the convenience it might afford a totalitarian political regime. That's how it was. Back then. A well-regulated militia was the Second Amendment's answer to government oppression. When you think about it, that kinda makes Abbie Hoffman look like Little Bo Peep.
Restated, the Second Amendment assumes a well-regulated militia necessary to the security of a free state, and confers upon ordinary citizens the right to keep and bear arms to that end. Dig deeper, and you find that many states mandated males older than eight years of age purchase or be provided arms, and be trained to use them. Preservation of freedom, not personal protection, was the objective.
Personal protection was mentioned in some of the preliminary drafts submitted by the states, but was not included in the draft ratified. This can only be interpreted to mean that, after consideration, personal protection was deemed to lie outside the scope of the Second Amendment. What people needed personal protection from, two-hundred-and-twenty-five years ago, was Native Americans and wild animals, perceived as nearly synonymous. Back then. Forget about whether the Second Amendment applies to guns used for sport or hunting. Duh. That's how people fed themselves.
There are two camps on gun control, each with their own agenda. The problem is that neither contemplates holding gun owners accountable for collateral damage. For example, when a child gets ahold of a gun and accidentally kills himself, or herself, or kills someone else, why isn't the gun owner (the father, the neighbor, the candle-stick maker) charged with negligent homicide?
When an adult with a gun maims or kills another human being, by what logic is the gun's registered owner absolved of all responsibility?
Whether by theft or legitimate sale, the person from whom the gun was obtained is (to some extent) responsible for what happened. It must be so, for without accountability there is no incentive to stop and consider the consequences of one's actions. Guns don't kill people; people with guns kill people. And until gun people are held responsible for the weapons that pass into or through their hands, the pile of dead kids will continue to grow and grow.
Consider this: I have been a Post Office* Window Clerk for seven years. I've sold postage to hundreds of people applying for carry permits - old, young, male, female, purple, green, well-dressed, pungent. But when one of them asks me how to address the envelope (? they're already addressed, sir, all you have to do is write your return address - on those lines there), or where to put the stamps (? see that little box where it says, "Post Office Will Not Deliver Without Proper Postage"?), when I realize that you just never know who's packin' heat - maybe everybody - I get a really bad feeling about it.
*Opinions expressed are entirely my own and have nothing whatsoever to do with the U. S. Postal Service or any of the fine individuals who work there.
The only reason I can think of why blatant abuses of power (see NYT, April 10, 2013, page 1, "For Former Regulators, a Home on Wall Street") don't arouse a well-regulated militia, is that corruption has become so pervasive in our society, so commonplace, that it has no shock value any more. We need to understand that the present situation exists only because we allow it to.
