According to the Bill of Rights, the citizens of the United 
States of America have the "Right to Bear Arms". 

Of course, this little statement was written well before it was
known what the word "Arms" could refer to.  In reality, one
machine gun could have changed the course of history in 1776. 
Actually, a pump action shotgun might have done just as well. 
The point is that we now have ordinary citizens guarding their
homes with weapons that could be used to wage a pretty good size
war some number of years ago.  Now, if the government does not
restrict the right to bear arms, we are likely to have a 
situation much like we see on television as it portrayed the old 
west with gunslingers and shoot outs.  And, in fact, is that 
not what is happening in some respect?  

So, the government steps in and bans all sorts of guns and
sets up sale restrictions and now the entire business goes
underground and the price of weapons goes up and those people who
want a sophisticated weapon for an unlawful purpose will commit
more crime to obtain one and what have we accomplished?  Not a
whole lot.  Criminals still have as many guns as they want.  

Four presidents have been assassinated with guns.  Others
have been attacked.  Security services set up metal detectors to
keep fire arms out of courts and airplanes and someone develops
plastic guns and ammunition that is undetectable.  I would
propose that the problem is not the guns but rather the people. 
It seems to me that all of the legislation in the world is not
going to keep some lunatic from getting his hands on an automatic
weapon and wiping out a fast food restaurant.  

The police get bulletproof vests and the criminals get special 
bullets that will go through the vests.  You can go into
an Army-Navy store and buy bulletproof clothing for children.  
Children are caught with guns in school on a regular basis.  
The amount of crime involving weapons is staggering.  I can't 
believe that we can blame it all on television and the movies, 
although the media has gone a long way toward making the owning 
and use of firearms seem very natural.  And the sad fact is 
that there are not enough jails to hold all of the criminals that 
are caught with firearms. 

One possible solution is education.  If we teach children to
respect weapons it is possible that the next generation will not
blow itself away.  If we stop promoting weapons as toys, it is
just possible that children will gain a healthy respect for the
power that a weapon can have and not consider them to be play
things.  Arming the general population is not a viable answer. 
It is unfortunate, but none the less true, that there exists a
large number of people who will get into knock down, drag out
fights over a parking space.  Who knows what they would do if
they had a gun.

And the saddest fact of all is that the majority of violence
involving fire arms occurs in the home.  Someone wakes up in the
middle of the night, grabs the gun out of the night stand and
shots an intruder who turns out to be their spouse who got up to
go to the bathroom.  Does that sound bizarre?  Well, as strange
as it seems, I would be willing to bet that it happens two or
three times a week somewhere in this country of ours.  Worse yet
are the stories we hear about children showing a gun that they
found in the house to a friend.  It looks like a toy, it feels
like a toy, but if it is loaded, it works like a real gun. 
Unfortunately, we read stories like that every day in the
newspapers.

I will be the first to agree that we cannot legislate away
every problem.  But it certainly doesn't make sense for the
National Rifle Association to spend hundreds of thousands of
dollars lobbying congress against any gun legislation when all 
of this accidental (or not so accidental) killing is going on.    
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