A well REGULATED Militia

[A Person]

The Second Amendment reads

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.

The NRA and gun aficionados concentrate on the red bit and completely ignore the blue bit. Ignoring the clear intent that it is the security of the State that this Amendment is directed towards and not the fears of individuals, obviously some regulations were anticipated - so what part of 'well regulated' could be improved?

Here are a few of my suggestions, using another dangerous and ubiquitous (but actually useful) item as an example...

We are obliged to carry third party insurance for our cars - to compensate other people for damages that may result from your careless driving. How about requiring gunshot insurance to compensate other people (or their survivors) from your careless shooting. No insurance - no driving, no insurance - no carry gun. The glorious FREE MARKET will place premiums based not on ideology but the hard facts of your likelihood of doing something stupid. Of course a history of crime, mental instability or actually using the damn thing to shoot people will put the premiums up just as driving drunk, fast and killing people with your car would.

Before you can drive a car you have to apply for a license and take a test. Seems the least you should have to do for a machine designed for one purpose only - killing people.

Before you can take your car on the road you need to register it. If your car is used in a crime, or its plate is noted at a crime scene then you as its owner can expect a visit from the police. If every gun was required to be registered and a sample casing scanned for its ballistic 'fingerprint' then if that gun were used in a crime you could also expect a visit. If your excuse is that it had been stolen, then - just as with your car - you had better report it stolen.

This would of course cost money, but just as vehicle owners/drivers pay licensing, registration and usage fees, gun owners and shooters should be expected to bear at least some of the burden through user fees,

I recognise that guns and automobiles are not the same things - unlike guns, automobiles have a useful function and are essential for modern life, but surely this would be a reasonable approach?

BAWAHAHAHA.

Of course it stands no chance at all and being reasonable is why. Reasonable and guns are not happy together.

[Liv]

I made this very similar argument on facebook, after someone posted a picture of a wrecked car, labeled "we don't blame cars when they hit people, we blame the drivers".

I asserted that cars aren't purposed originally for death, but guns are. I was then promptly de-friended.

I think the biggest issue is the "image" guns, and the of owning guns provide for the owner. Even if they never shoot it, they believe they're like a superhero in the movies, they believe it gives them power over others, part of our nationalistic mindset. We need good anti-gun advertising and anti-gun placement in media for anything to change. Do what they did with the cigarettes, and in twenty years it might then be uncool to own one. Wait another fifty and you might be able to ban them, but as long as they think they can curve bullets and save the world the next time someone tries to infringe on their freedoms, then there will always be some lone wacko out there misusing them, because the line of reality and fiction gets blurred.

[SouthernFriedInfidel]

Saw this on the web yesterday:

[SouthernFriedInfidel]

And this today:

[Liv]

Like everything in America it seems as though we have only the most radical voices speaking on gun control.

It's amazing how silly and infantile the whole controversy is, and that our consistent inability to act like adults and address the issue has led to so many tragedies, over and over again.