Have more guns than the crazy people.

On a more serious note, I believe that the underlying cause of violence lays not in the availability of guns but in a deeper social issue.
That being said, it is still conceivable that lowering gun availability would decrease violence. At the same time, though, according to a crime report I read from the NYPD, more crimes are committed with unlicensed guns than licensed. This leads me to believe that criminals who desire to have guns will be able to attain them, whether gun control is implemented or not.

Doesn't mean we should just give up trying completely.

You are probably right about criminals getting guns whether or not they are illegal, although an almost total ban, like in Japan, would make it very hard to find them. However, there are more common-sense regulations(limiting how many guns you can purchase in a year, background checks on owners, etc.) that would help keep things safer.

The army is crazy. I don't like them. We should become a pacifist nation!

I personally think that almost total bans are ideal. That way the only people who have significant access to them are people within highly organized crime syndicates and specially trained police officers. Neither of whom will simply pick up a gun and massacre students.

The fact is that the conflicts that include guns will generally occur anyways, the availability of guns makes them more lethal and much harder to prevent from escalating. The situations where someone who is unstable gains access to a gun can allow them to kill 10 people within minutes and make it just short of impossible to prevent.

The only effective way of preventing them from gaining firearms is to have the almost total bans. In countries where the almost total bans are in place typical police men don't even need guns to carry out their duties (Take the UK for example). Much less accidents and much less problematic.

Ultimately I believe that the negative impacts of common gun ownership far outweigh the positive aspects.

The US constitution's Second Amendment is misinterpreted, and has nothing to do with the right of the ordinary people to have arms 200-some years later.
That right is ridiculous now, IMHO.

Most unlicensed guns were licensed guns at one point, and were stolen or whatever. If we had a gun ban now, yes, criminals would still be able to get guns for years, but eventually they'd become tougher to find.

Um, the Second Amendment does give citizens the right to bear arms. The Supreme Court said so. That's it, end of story.

You can always 'unammend' it or something along those lines. Go through legal channels and get it overturned.

Yes, the second ammendment does give people the right to bear arms. Does that make it 'right' that anyone is allowed to have them? I think that sometime over the next 20-30 years a number of big gun-related incidents will make it a key issue in the future. Even if the process of limiting gun ownership is currently slow.

OK then, if guns are virtually eliminated for citizens. What happens when there is need for revolution? Only the government will have guns then.

Preferably the revolution would happen through legal and democratic means :P

I'm a strong supporter of the right to bear arms.
especialyl now.

A democratic revolution is like a virgin prostitute. Technically possible but unlikely and usually ineffective.

As for the idea that guns will dissapear if we make the illegal is logical, but ignores the fact the we have to give the army (and "special purpose" police squads) "legal" weapons, and that weapons can be imported even in the unlikely even that we decied to go pacifist.

"Unammend" it through legal channels? The Constitution can only be amended through Congress and the States. Are you honestly saying you want to subvert the democratic process to alter the CONSTITUTION? That, my friend, is an incredibly dangerous precedent to set, if it could even happen lawfully, which is doubtful. What happens when the politicians think the rest of the Bill of Rights needs updating, or that the President really shouldn't be limited to just two terms, or that the 14th Amendment has become an anachronism.

By saying that the Constitution doesn't say what it really says (a right to bear arms), and does say what it doesn't (gay marriage, national ID card, etc.), you open up all kinds of terrifying possibilities for government abuse and tyranny.

I suppose it's possible that all you meant was that the Supreme Court could rule on the matter again, but if these future Justices have any kind of ethical fortitude they will support the precedent set by this Court and not rule for purely political reasons. The Constitution doesn't change unless it is actually changed.

Gun laws prohibiting law-abiding citizens from purchasing guns would be as effective at stopping gun related crimes in the US as our drug laws have been at stopping the sale and use of narcotics.

The majority of illegal guns on the street come from straw-purchasing and illegal gun dealers. Most of the heavy artillery those dealers are selling come in through our borders. "Ain't no Uzi's made in Harlem."

What the US needs is strict laws against carrying, selling, and using unlicensed or illegal guns.
Carrying: 25 years
Selling: 50 years
Using: Life with no parole.
We could make room in the prisons by putting non-violent drug offenders into rehab instead of jail.

Uzis*

Ban bullets, or make them exorbitantly expensive. =D

The gun collectors can have their fancy rifles, but nobody can steal them and use them without bullets.

Folks, the framers of the Constitution of the United States of America (the most beautiful document to ever be written, imho) had just revolted against a tyrannical kingdom. They knew very well that tyranny can hit home.

There is a reason for the right to free speech and the right to bear arms to be #1 and #2 respectively. Because they are the most important to fighting tyranny.

Well, those things were the first 2 things they later remembered they forgot to put into the Constitution itself. I would presume they weren't that important to them at the time of writing the Constitution.
It is funny how "the right to bear arms" means that a convicted murderer cannot be denied the right to have a hunting rifle at home in the USA, while at the same time the President of those same USA threatens to bomb and invade a series of sovereign countries that only wanted to arm themselves with same kinds of WMD's that USA already has for more than 50 years. And was the only country that ever used one against fellow human beings in war.

Are you saying nuclear weapons and firearms are morally equivalent? That's just silly.

Using the atom bomb on Japan saved countless more lives, both Japanese and American, by ending the war quickly without having to actually invade Japan. An invasion also would probably have meant that Japan would be partitioned like Germany, and we'd have had a North and South Japan like Korea.

And the Framers originally thought that the Bill of Rights wasn't necessary because the Federal government wasn't expressly delegated powers to legislate on matters like Free Speech and guns. That's also the idea behind the Tenth Amendment, which gives all powers not specifically given to the Federal government to the states or the people.

A) Convicted felons need to have their rights restored in the state where they were convicted to be able to buy or own a gun.
B) The US is the only country to use a nuclear weapon on a sovereign country. WMDs have been used in many wars.

"Well, those things were the first 2 things they later remembered they forgot to put into the Constitution itself. I would presume they weren't that important to them at the time of writing the Constitution."

You presume wrong. They were always an area of contention among many of the founding fathers on whether or not to include them in the Constitution. The argument was whether or not outlining specific rights would limit those rights to ONLY those listed.

This was FAR from an afterthought...it was push and pull all the way to get something ratified. The Bill of Rights took about two years to get ratification from all states and New Jersey ratified it only months after the Constitution itself was ratified.

Dictators routinely ban guns in their countries in their rise to power. An unarmed populace is an enslaved populace.

The government must always fear the people, NEVER the other way around.

Killing one man, 10 students or 100.000 civilians IS morally equivalent, yes. No amount of lobbying can make any of those acts "right".

The death of one man is not equivalent to the deaths of a hundred thousand. That's basically saying vehicular manslaughter as a result of drunk driving is the same as the genocide in Darfur. Both are tragedies, but it's ridiculous to say they are equally wrong morally.

Lobbying? Who's in the death lobby?

Sure, I just can envision how terrified G.W.B. is by the fact that there are some 100.000.000+ people owning a gun in the US, while his goverment is defended by only several milions on military and police personell.
If the people need to perform a revolution, not having a gun at home is just a slight tehnical difficulty. I know, I'm from Europe, and we have wars constantly here for millenia.
We also invented human rights before the US ever came to being, but one thing never occured to us here: that it is neccesary for every home to have a gun. Except in Switzerland, of course.
Now go check the proportion of murders per 100.000 inhabitants in the US and in the rest of the world....

I'm not going to say whether I think the 2nd amendment should be repealed, but there is a perfectly legal process for doing so, ie through the passage of an amendment repealing the 2nd amendment. Much like the amendment to repeal prohibition. I'm not convinced that's a good idea, but it's not like it's impossible to change the constitution, (I mean we've done it quite a few times, 27 to be exact.).

The right to drive a car is not the same as the right to own the gun. Cars are used for transportation, and if someone is driving drunk, well, how stupid of him.
Guns, on the other hand, have no "moral" use. Except hunting.

Using a gun to kill someone who is trying to kill you is "moral" behavior.