I'm not in favor of removing the second amendment, but I believe there are things that need to be looked at and restricted. Nothing in the constitution should be viewed as untouchable. In my opinion, that's the beauty of the document. The authors understood that what was true for them and their time period would not be true for future Americans and thus created the ability for the Constitution to adapt. I was talking to a retired police officer the other day who was about as conservative as possible. The conversation started off with him ranting about how Liberals were destroying the country. But when the conversation turned to Sandy Hook and gun control he had a different tone, and he made some great points about the purpose of the 2nd Amendment.
When that was put into the constitution we were coming out of control by a King and a bloody revolution, and we didn't exactly have an armed forces to defend ourselves. By allowing civilians to carry weapons it created that army, something that was important during the war of 1812. So while its true the 2nd Amendment was partially made as a guarantee to avoid a transition into tyranny, it was more so meant as a deterrent from foreign attack.
Besides that, the weapons available to people were completely different. A person owning a musket or a pistol where it took 30 seconds to reload is a whole different ballgame than hand guns or rifles that can rattle off 100 shots a minute. We have a military, we don't need the civilians to act as our second armed forces. And for those saying "but then we'll become slaves to the government" I hate to break it to you, but if the military turned on the population today, we wouldn't stand a chance. The idea that the civilians who have weapons today could stand up to the most powerful military in the world is a fantasy. This isn't 1776 where even though the training and numbers were uneven, the weapons were. This is 2012 where your semi-auto rifle is going up against drones and snipers and tanks and fully auto weapons. In my opinion, had the founding fathers written the constitution today, the 2nd Amendment would look quite different.
Now, what is the solution? I don't think we need to ban weapons. But we need to make the process of getting them more restricted. And we need to restrict the clip size of weapons people get, the fire type, and the types of guns. Hunting rifles simply put should be bolt action single shot. If you're hunting and you miss that first shot, chances are it doesn't matter how many bullets you can get off, you're not getting that animal. Hand guns are used for self defense, so limit the bullets to 6-8 per clip. If you can't defend yourself with that many bullets, you probably shouldn't own that gun in the first place because you don't know how to use it. And the final, and probably the most important change, needs to be in our treatment of mentally challenged people. Its just not where it needs to be right now.
Obviously those things won't stop things like this 100%. But it would make it more difficult. Even if you take away every gun, there are plenty of weapons out there. Just the other day a man in China stabbed 20 something kids with a knife. So in the end sometimes you just need to accept that there are sick people out there with sick minds who want to shock the world with heinous acts.
If you take away guns from civilians, the bad guys still have them. Now all they've done is created a black market for it and law abiding people won't have protection. The ignorance of democrats never ceases to amaze me.
