O #2,
It may be obvious to outside observers that common sense is a weak and stifled stepchild in this U.S. debate on guns.
Complication #1:
The U.S. Constitution includes Article #2 of the Bill of Rights. It is in my opinion among the most disjointed, badly worded clauses of the United States Constitution.
B. O. R. ARTICLE #2: Ratified December 15, 1791
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.
It's a spaghetti tangle of a mess.
Centuries elapsed before SCOTUS (the arbiter of the interpretation of such law) addressed whether 2A was a right of individuals, or States.
Many States including my home State of New York requires those that want a handgun to register it, apply for a license, whatever.
How can we possibly consider that not an infringement? And yet this and many other limits & restrictions are imposed.
The result is human rights / political / legal hypocrisy. "... shall not be infringed" is the ideal we impart ceremonial genuflect to. But then we infringe and usurp this "unalienable right" routinely, daily.
Conservative syndicated columnist George Will addressed whether "the right to keep and bear arms" was a right of "well regulated militias", or a right our Constitution confers to citizens.
In order to argue your point of view you have to say 3 things.
1st of all that only the 2nd Amendment in the Bill of Rights does not protect individual rights, it protects the rights of the government.
2nd you have to say that George Mason widely called the father of the Bill of Rights was wrong when he said by the militia we mean the whole People.
3rd you have to say the Founders were clumsy framers of the Constitution because if they wanted to do what you say they did with the [2nd] Amendment which is say, States can have militias, all they needed to say was, Congress shall have no power to prohibit State militias period. They didn't. They talked about the rights of the People.
George Will ABC-TV This Week 02/05/12
Rampage #3 calls it a "tussle". I'd call it a fracas. Bad news no matter what it's called.