The gun control that works: no guns

So from my perspective statements such as 'Guns are a tool' just don't wash. They are the only tool that comes to mind that are specifically designed to kill humans. There is no other use (besides sport shooting) that I can think of for a handgun. The same goes for high powered fully automatic military style rifles. Zero use for hunting an animal, perfectly tailored for hunting humans. That's disturbing to me, and I wouldn't want to live in a society that vehemently fights for the right to bear these arms.

Of course it is better to fix the root cause (mental illness, lack of empathy, education etc). Fighting the root is really hard and will take America generations of effort. Removing semi and full auto weapons can be done over night (the actual effectiveness could be argued ad nauseam, but at least the laws could be in place and some claw back of the 300 million odd weapons could begin).

Psychos would still rampage, but there's a lot less damage you can do if you only have a knife, or you have to reload after each shot.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Australia#The_P...

PS: I'd be happy to be corrected, but from the little I know about the issue, the meaning of 'right to bear arms' in the US constitution has been twisted away from the original intent of organised and well disciplined militias, to: hey look ma I bought a M16 from Walmart today hur hur

The other† purpose is to keep countries and people in check. The mere ability to immediately use firearms is enough to stop a lot of possible troublemakers.

A country keeps armed forces: military and border guard to keep external actors in check, police to keep unruly citizens in check. A private person keeps arms to keep in check potential burglars, assailants etc., and any other actor who could come in force, of which there are some historical examples discussed in other posts.

† aside of the sporting, hunting and collector activities.

It was technology that threw the founding fathers the unforeseen curve ball. What seemed like a simple question of allowing or disallowing private weapons was really an un-enumerated, technology restricted question of the form "should a private citizen have the means to deploy deadly force against 1 to 3 others".

Today we ask a different question. "How many other citizens should a private individual be allowed the power deploy deadly force against." Now the answer can be 0, 1, 5, a classroom, a neighborhood, even a small town. But the top end is getting higher every year.

The 2nd amendment is useless to us in answering this question. All that's left is haphazard whack-a-mole bans on emerging technologies.

The founding fathers didn't mean to give us a binary choice between total forced disarmament and allowing red-necks to have their own black-hawk helicopters.

Its time for an amendment.

Trouble with firearms boils down to their utterly disproportional power -- a single madman sporting a gun is capable of killing dozens of people before intervening forces can end the spree. A single madman sporting a knife may kill one, two, five, ten others, but not more. Knife-attacks are horrific yet self-limiting.