Why can’t you assume that? Is it because guns are so vilified that school children drawing pictures, making vague gun like gestures or playing with guns such as those from Lego figures get punished?

“It is child-logic that says the second amendment prohibits laws which demand responsibility from gun owners.”

What is child like is prohibiting honest and free gun safety classes in schools. We do it for drugs, we do it for sex, but tar and feathers if it’s suggested for guns.

Responsibility leads to trust. WE don’t trust the government to leave registration alone. Mission creep reigns and registration has and will be abused with little or no consequences to the abusers. Look at the border patrol, look at the TSA. Do checkpoints 50 miles from a border or airport sound anything like the missions they were created for?

IF you don’t watch the watchers, if you don’t resist when resisting is easy, it may well be impossible later.

Magazine capacity restrictions do not appreciably limit a persons killing capacity.

I like the idea of universal background checks for all pistol purchases, but all by itself it will not reduce the number of guns available (ultimately) to criminals.

Anything that would significantly limit a criminals access to guns would need to limit a law abiding citizen as well and in a way that the 2nd amendment will not tolerate. Losing that amendment isn’t going to happen either (nor do I think it should).

We should demand of our politicians that they propose legislation that focuses on the guns and behaviors that contribute to most gun deaths. And come up with legislation that is compatible with the second amendment.

There should be a national registry, just like the founders had a list of every able bodied and armed man they might need to call to muster. Every gun owner SHOULD be called to muster at least twice a year in order to present their arms for inspection. Well regulated means that everyone conforms to a certain standard in their choice of gun, we should have a standard of quality at the least.

A gun owner should have to show that he is capable of owning and using a gun safely. 200 years ago you could assume that your kids’ friends new not to play with the gun you keep in the bedroom closet. Today you cannot assume that at all.

It is child-logic that says the second amendment prohibits laws which demand responsibility from gun owners.

The big take away is:
LEVITT: I would just say that anyone with any sense looks at the current political climate, thinks about the kinds of proposals that are being made and accepts the fact that none of these proposals are going to have any real impact at all.

I would add that can easily be extrapolated to 90% of gun laws. NO PROOF that they have any affect on crime. [link]

The widely heralded economists Stephen Dubner and Steve Levitt of Freakonomics fame took a look at some facts and figures surrounding the gun debate in their most recent podcast How to Think About Guns. Freakonomics tag line is “The Hidden Side of Everything” and in this podcast Dubner and Levitt give some hard facts and truths on guns in America. Facts and figures no one seems to be talking about in Washington or in the media. Essentially they highlight the ridiculous perspective and solutions of those leading the gun control conversation. Levitt states, ”I would just say that anyone with any sense looks at the current political climate, thinks about the kinds of proposals that are being made and accepts the fact that none of these proposals are going to have any real impact at all.” The podcast is 30 minutes long and is a good listen

The pro-gun argument is that you can’t positively establish a causal link between stricter gun control and a reduction in suicide/assault. This is intuitive and they will say things like, “if someone wants to kill themselves/someone, making it illegal or more difficult to buy a gun won’t help. They will just find another way or break the law to buy it”. This is a “common sense” matter in the same way that the earth is flat is just common sense, I mean just look at the ground, it’s not round. It’s true that it’s probably impossible to control for all of the other variables at play in determining suicide and crime rates; so measuring the actual effects of certain laws on them is a non starter.

But as an economist, there is one thing that we have proven about human behavior. That is that we make decisions at the margin. All else being equal (ceteris paribus)If the price of oranges goes up, people will buy fewer oranges. For suicide, guns represent a ‘cheap’ method of killing yourself. By cheap I mean the ‘cost’ of killing yourself is not money but pain and uncertainty. Increase these ‘costs’ and fewer people will kill themselves. Make guns harder to access and some will decide to use poison or hang themselves or jump off a bridge. But for some of them the uncertainty of living through it and the prospect of diing slowly and in pain if it doesn’t work is enough to consider other options. Maybe they just wait the week long waiting period; during that time some of them will feel better by the end.

Same thing with assault. If you make it harder to get a gun legally then you drive buyers to the black market where (in terms of price + risk) guns are more expensive. If you raise the cost of something, like doing a drive-by, then, ceteris paribus, people will do fewer of them.

That’s just math.

Fixing those will certainly go a long way to fixing lots of other problems too.

Odd that I don’t recall calls for rewriting the First as the Internet was coming on-line. Seems that in that case we always went after the criminals NOT THERE TOOLS..