How can we regulate guns ... ?

But are they are they right? Do these same laws make sense in today's world? Those same founders also owned slaves, thought that women should not vote, and that the vote of free blacks should only count as 3/5ths of a white man's vote.I think you are forgetting that the Founders were as fallible as we are, and that laws need to change when they no longer work.

It is going to be nearly impossible to suddenly eliminate the number of guns in the US. What we can do is control where they are carried. New York's law seems to be the best option of real gun control where you are not allowed to carry a gun in public. For those that think weapons are necessary to protect them from government intrustion then fine, keep your firearms at home and have them at the ready in case we need to topple some fantasized tyrranical US government.If you are caught with a handgun/AR in public, with an unregistered handgun/AR, or privately selling a handgun/AR then you serve a one year sentence. We can make exceptions for gaming firearms just as other countries do. Last I checked, people are not holding up 7-11's with bolt action 30-06's or full length 20 guages. This is the only real solution that I can see.

So we should allow slavery, end women's suffrage, and re-enact the Dredd Scott decision?The founders are just as fallible as we are. They are not demi-gods that we should be worshiping. What we need to figure out is if the laws made in the late 18th century still make sense in the 21st century. Afterall, that is why they included methods for changing the Constitution since they knew that times change, and that they would get things wrong.

In the US, it is highly unlikely.

And Rahvin is wrong. What is your point?What we see in history are tyrrants who were put in position with mobs carrying guns. The Bolshevik revolution was a revolution by the people, and the result was Stalin and the gulags. Anything like that in the US right now? No. There aren't any purges going on, and there won't be.

The founders were just as fallible as any other human, us included. They were not gods, no matter how much you want to worship them like deities. That is not my attitude. They got many things right, some things they got wrong (women's suffrage, slavery), and for others times have changed to the point that good ideas are no longer good ideas. Why is that so difficult to understand?

From a historical viewpoint, modern Americans enjoy more rights than any generation before them, at least in my view. In previous generations we had laws like the Sedition Act where you couldn't even say bad things about the President in the press. Our modern views of search and seizure have changed drastically. Do you really think that a sheriff in the 19th century asked politely if he could search a wagon? I highly doubt it. In my eyes, they aren't. They are injustices, yes, but not tyranny. What Hitler, Mao, and Stalin did was tyranny.As it relates to my ideas of gun control, this type of systematic widespread tyranny could still be prevented by citizens since they would still be able to house arms on their own property (assuming that an armed citizenry could stop the type of tyranny I am talking about).

Not only misguided, but ineffective. As far as the US is concerned, there is a glut of weapons already out there and we can not get rid of them very easily. It would take several generations to really make a dent on the number of weapons.What we do see is a strong correlation between firearm deaths and poverty. If we can improve the lives of the most unfortunate in our culture we will make massive gains on violent crime in this country.

Unless we are willing to have government agents go door to door and forcefully search and seize weapons we are going to have to live with the fact that there are millions and millions of weapons out there. There is no way of getting around it. The only way around this problem that I see is to confiscate weapons if they are found on people whne they are in public, but even then we would have to really rethink our constitutional rights as it pertains to search and seizure.Overall, I think our money, time, and energy are better spent fixing the underlying problems in our culture. Gun violence is a symptom of our problems, not the problem itself.

I was thinking more along the lines of immediate results, as in the next 2 years.I do agree that long term attrition would reduce the number of guns out there, but we are still talking about a glut of weapons. There are still Colt Navy revolvers from the 19th century in circulation, and they fire just fine.But more importantly, no gun ban is going to work unless a large bulk of the population is on board. American history has taught us that we are all too willing to create black markets for the things we want. There are countries with high gun ownership with relatively little gun violence. While I do think that gun restrictions can help reduce gun crime, it is still treating a symptom instead of the cause. If you go to a large city in Switzerland do you see the same types of slums that you see in major US cities? I don't think you do (but I could be wrong). I am not talking about feeding the poor, or housing the poor. I am talking about our economic and cultural system that produces such a large disparity. I am not even sure what the solution is to this problem, but I do know that it is spawning gun violence in the US.

I will gladly concede that the current gun laws and rights have been correctly interpretted by the SCOTUS. I even think that they have correctly interpretted the intent of the founders.What we should ask is if those rights make sense in the modern world. Should we consider rewriting the 2nd Ammendment. I am not saying that we should rewrite it, but I think it is high time that we at least discuss it.

It has disappeared. That's the whole point. We no longer need to call up a militia to defend ourselves from invaders. We have a standing army for that now that we spend billions of dollars on. I am not agreeing with the founders. All I am agreeing to is that the SCOTUS has correctly interpretted the intent of the founders. What I am saying is that intent no longer applies in modern America.SCOTUS can not make law. It can only interpret it. If these other instruments are so much better at killing people, then why are people in such a huff about a ban on rifles? Why not use knives et al. instead? Obviously, they are much more effective than rifles, so where is the problem?You are arguing against your own position. You mean those values that led to public hanging of blacks fighting for equal rights, segregation in public schools, and overt sexism in the workplace? Those values?

Perhaps as a compromise between the two camps we should only allow people to own black powder muzzle loading ball muskets since those are the arms that the founders were talking about. Sound fair?Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

I think we can say that gun regulations would limit the damage such a psycho could do . . . sort of. If we limit magazines to 9 rounds instead of 30 then the shooter will have to stop shooting after 9 rounds instead of 30, even if it is a short time period but hopefully long enough for someone to tackle the psycho. That's about all the good I can see. However, psychos make up a tiny portion of all gun related deaths and gun releated crimes. Sadly, there are twice as many children under 15 killed accidently by guns last year as there were killed in the most recent school shooting.If we want to stop gun violence then it makes much more sense to regulate gun sales, register guns so owners are held responsible, and limit the right to carry in public.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

Defending against invaders is certainly one of the purposes of having a militia. Given that the founders were rebels who did repel an invading army, if not during the revolutionary war then definitely during the war of 1812, I don't think it is much of a stretch.