Gun Rights? - Civis

It's been nearly a month since we last posted here at the American Discourse blog, we apologize. Fortunately, we're back; this time with the topic of gun rights.

One thing I'm not going to do here is to be the over-the-top liberal who says we should take away all the guns and dispose of them. In reality, that's as ridiculous as trying to outlaw abortions. However, just as 3rd trimester abortions should be decreased, so should the proliferation of large assault weapons.

Perhaps this is an appropriate point to discuss the 2nd Amendment. The text is as follows: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." So clearly, this means that a large segment of society should have large lethal automatic guns I don't understand how that conclusion can be made. I firmly believe that this amendment is granting the people to posess medium to small sized handguns, that are of course lethal, but not able to automatically fire dozens and dozens of rounds per minute. This amendment guarantees a "militia," which in my opinion is definitely not the group today known as "The Minutemen" operating at the border.

What I think needs to be done is a total ban on certain assault weapons. I don't mean some pistol a reasonable person keeps in their closet to protect themselves. That's absolutely fine and should be encouraged. Things that can kill more people in the same timeframe as grenades shouldn't be legally available in the U.S. market. There's a reason we don't allow people to purchase grenades. Then why can people buy more violent and powerful weapons? If this ban isn't possible (right now it is not politically, despite Democratic majorities in both houses, interestingly), then at the very least these weapons should be made extremely difficult to obtain.

Everyone has an absolute right to own a reasonably sized gun for protection. But the Constitution has never guaranteed weapons of mass death for any citizen.