Just wanted to put my two cents in about gun issues. My father was a hunter and is a target shooter, so I've been around guns all my life. I have also worked in both the state and federal courts for almost twenty years, so I see a lot of gun cases.
While you certainly can kill/harm people with things other than guns, it is much harder to do so, and the vast majority of murder cases I see involve guns. I'd say the murder/assault cases run about fifty-fifty between legal guns and illegal guns. For me, the problem with easy access to legal guns is that people buy them, keep them loaded in houses/cars/on their persons, and then unfortunately, the guns are right there when they lose their tempers. I have far too many murder cases that have arisen out of stupidity, people killing each other over parking spaces, noise complaints, not moving a bike out of the way of a car, etc. That one moment of temper combined with an easy way to kill ruins the lives of both families.
My caseload does not include the large number of cases where children get their hands on loaded guns that their parents haven't secured and hurt either themselves or someone else. Prosecutors are very reluctant to charge parents in those cases because they see it as compounding a tragedy.
As I said, my father had his friends hunted for years. All were responsible hunters, really understood guns, wore blaze orange everything, only shot if they knew they could kill the deer and no one else was around. They also never hunted on state game lands, only on private lands owned by friends. There was a reason for this, they were terrified of weekend hunters, usually from the cities, who had minimal experience with guns and basically got together with buddies during hunting season, drank like crazy, then went out and shot at anything that moved. I lived in a big hunting area and there are always stories about this.
One thing I had not realized about the NRA is that they have means to essentially force people to join them. Over the years, they have entered into partnerships with many gun clubs/ranges and now if you want to join one, you must also join the NRA. My father's gun range is one those places, he has been able to trick his way around the requirement for years but now probably won't be able to do this. Since he absolutely refuses to join the NRA, he may have to give up his membership. It makes me wonder how many people have joined the NRA because it's the only way to get access to a local gun range/
I personally see no reason that any civilian needs an assault weapon, body armor, or any other military/police gear. I'm not a fan of the Second Amendment, but think it is here to stay. However, I see nothing in the language of the Second Amendment that says you cannot restrict ownership by type of weapons, control the amount of ammo people own, or restrict who can sell guns. I'd love to see guns treated the way my commonwealth, Pennsylvania, treats liquor, only sold in state-controlled stores, no more private sales, gun stores, Walmart, gun shows, etc. I see no reason that it should be easier to buy a gun than to get Sudafed.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-36563337
