There are many here who are for more laws restricting gun ownership and barring certain types of guns (AK-47s and other military style weapons).

Personally, as an American, I am first and foremost against any encroachment on freedom, and gun ownership is a right in my country. These individuals who go to schools to shoot kids should be shot themselves. The way I was trained, deadly force is used in three instances:

1. When your own life is in danger.
2. When someone else's life is in danger.
3. When national security is in danger.

If you're holding hostages, then you have one chance to surrender. If not, BANG. No stand offs, no negotiations. If you're intent on killing innocents, then you're history. How hard is it?

It is not the availability of guns that is the problem, it is the people that are using them. And the desire to own a gun does not necessarily make the buyer dangerous. But owning a gun means that there is a certain level of responsibility that the owner is charged with.

Keeping the guns secured and away from children is one part of it, but educating your kids as to how to identify a real gun, not to pick it up or use it in any way without proper supervision is also extremely important. How many school gun-related incidents have been because a kid got one of his father's guns without his knowledge?

I've heard of a guy leaving a loaded handgun on a table unattended and his kid used it as a toy and shot another kid. Who is to blame in this situation? The gun? The kid? Or the idiot who left a loaded gun unattended in a house where children live?

This actually was the case with a kindergarten child who brought his father's gun to school and shot another kid. A child died because of this father's negligence, not the gun itself.

Do I need to say it? "With great power comes . . . "

Personally, as an American, I am first and foremost against any encroachment on freedom

This is one of the sillier American mantras. There are hundreds of freedoms you're just not going to have. The freedom to rape children, for instance, and the freedom to tie up and shoot schoolgirls. Not only are these freedoms not going to be available enshrined in law, but anything which makes these things harder to do - like banning guns - is obviously a good thing.

Freedom is not a religion: you can't just drop the word and think the argument's over.

If I demand the freedom to collect anthrax and postage stamps, and I swear to you I'll be responsible, are you going to be okay with that? Remember, anthrax doesn't kill people; postmen do.

IMP.

Michael (Bowling for Columbine) Moore hates guns too and prides himself
on not owning one. But he can afford a bodyguard that carries a gun for
him.
But in "Bowling", MM shows himself getting a gun!  In fact he went to a lot of effort to get that gun,  to the point of having the gun delivered to the bank itself instead of getting a certificate to go to the gun store and pick it up...like everyone else had to do.

"This is one of the sillier American mantras. There are hundreds of freedoms you're just not going to have. The freedom to rape children, for instance, and the freedom to tie up and shoot schoolgirls."
None of these items are located in the US Constitution or it's ammendments.  The right to gun ownership is.

I've been following this debate with great interest.  As a resident of the UK I feel that if people didn't have guns they wouldn't be able to use them in situations such as this.  End of.  However I would like if the Americans on the board could answer one question for me.  What exactly is this love affair you have with the gun?

Andy

If you want to wrap yourself in the Flag on this one, at least read the Constitution before you do so.

This country has spent 200 years working its way backward thru the Second Amendment. Isn't it time you started reading the whole thing, not just the parts you like?

So, (however ill-advised unethical or irrelevant it may be) a right - any right - once granted by the judicature can and should never be amended?

As the resident law prof, I might as well chime in...

The provision of the Federal Constitution guaranteeing the right of the people to keep and bear arms applies only to the federal government alone, leaving the states free to regulate the manner of bearing arms, subject to the provisions of the state constitutions.

Furthermore, it has been stated that the Second Amendment was not adopted with individual rights in mind, and establishes no right to possess a firearm apart from the role possession of the gun might play in maintaining a state militia. A state or territorial legislature, therefore, in the absence of similar provisions in the organic law, is free to regulate the manner of bearing arms. Nevertheless, it may lack the power entirely to destroy the right.

Most state constitutions, however, contain a provision protecting the right to keep and bear arms which is similar in substance or effect to that found in the United States Constitution, and legislation in such a state may not infringe the provision of its constitution. Unlike the U.S. Constitution, which protects the right only in terms of the need to maintain a "well-ordered" militia, many of the state constitutions also protect the right to keep and bear arms in self-defense, and are thus broader in application than the Second Amendment.

However, like the right protected from infringement by the Second Amendment, the right protected by the state constitutions is not absolute, but instead is subject to regulation by the states or territories and their political subdivisions, under their police power, provided the regulation is reasonable.

Even as against the federal government the right to keep and bear arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment is not absolute, and does not confer on individual citizens the right to bear arms in violation of validly enacted federal law. The Second Amendment does not confer on U.S. citizens a broad right to unregulated possession of all types of weapons. Rather, the right is subject to reasonable regulation for legitimate purposes such as the protection of public health and safety.

To pass constitutional muster, a regulation pertaining to weapons and implicating the constitutional protections is required to: (1) be a reasonable limitation, (2) be reasonably necessary to protect public safety or welfare, and (3) be substantially related to the ends sought. Further, even a legitimate governmental purpose in regulating the right to bear arms cannot be pursued by means that broadly stifle the exercise of the right, or criminalize a substantial amount of innocent, harmless, or useful conduct, where the governmental purpose can be more narrowly achieved.

Having followed this debate intermittently and read some of the truly horrendous personal stories I am gobsmacked and horrified by the casual use of guns in the USA.

Obviously gun crime does exist in the UK, however in all my born days (and I have in my time lived in some fairly dodgy neighbourhoods) I have never even seen a civilian with a gun let alone been on either end of the barrel, and I would say the same is probably true for my many and varied group of friends and acquaintances.

Of course it is always dangerous to extrapolate from one country to another but it seems clear to me that the only reason most people  feel they need to own a gun - is for protection against all those other people who feel they need to own a gun.

If anything this debate has only re-inforced my existing prejudice against gun carrying.