Since the topic's been opened up...
It's one of those issues that usually devolves into emotional anger rapidly. I try to see the other sides view, as a gun owner I am obviously biased, but I try to understand the other view as best I can. Gun owners get angry when people try to criminalize their property, and gun banners are angry when a piece of shit conducts a massacre (actually, everyone is angry over this - one side just doesn't blame the tool). I get the emotional anger. Something tragic happens, people want an easy solution, blaming a tool is an easy solution emotionally if not logically.
Part of the problem, I think, it that it is an issue in which almost all knowledge is possessed by one side of the debate. It's often like arguing Darwin with a creationist, there is a clear information monopoly that makes it exceptionally difficult to find any grounds of basic agreement to begin. Every time I listen to a pro-ban argument on the news, or form a Senator, or from one of my neighbors that thinks "AR" stands for "Assault Rifle", it's just riddled with factual error. I do not mean errors in judgement or things I don't want to hear, I mean actual claims to fact that are simply false. For just one example, I've been told a thousand times that an AR-15 is 'high-powered', which is the opposite of true. The AR rose in prominence precisely because it is by definition low-powered (it does not even fire a full size rifle round), and it allows for a lighter, more controllable rifle and kit. Firearm parts, how they function, banners almost never have any real awareness or idea of how they work and so the words they use fail to reach anyone who has ever really used them because they are simply wrong in claim after claim. This does not make my side right, but it kills the argument being made from any chance of being effective.
I think it is pretty straightforward and obvious that firearm ownership is one of the few rights that are directly protected from being restricted by the State. Whether this is good or bad can obviously be debated, but it is singled out in the Constitution as being allowed. 'well, they didn't have AR-15's in 1789' doesn't make any logical sense to me. News television networks didn't exist in 1789, but basically no person has ever argued CNN is not protected by the freedom of the press. Do we hold that Mormons are not protected by the freedom of religion because that faith did not exist in 1789? No. It is a made up standard that is applied to nothing else in the document; an inconsistent argument dictated by the end conclusion that is desired instead of a rational process.
I think real regulation is presently illegal under the Constitution, and am personally against it for a host of reasons. There are some proposed laws that might practically help the problem, even if I don't like them, but not many. Background checks make some logical sense, a crime of momentary passion might reasonably be stopped if someone is forced to take a few days to cool down. I think it's kind of absurdism that I have to go through one and wait 10 days to receive my gun every time I buy one; I already own a ton. But for a first purchase, while this is unconstitutional, it might possibly alleviate some shootings.
Most other propositions, make no rational sense to me. Turning me into an overnight felon does not make my neighborhood safer. Restricting how many rounds I can load into a magazine (a clip is not the same thing, I have never seen a 30 round clip in my life) does not make my neighborhood safer. Scapegoating the rural population does not make my neighborhood safer. A person bent on massacring innocents will do so regardless of whether or not a particular firearm model is legal. They will get one through illegal ones, or simply make one. The types of guns people want to ban are nearing or over a century old depending on which specific one, it is not exceptionally difficult to simply make one yourself. There is no evidence that gun control laws in the US have ever worked; and much evidence that they do not.
Areas with the tightest gun control laws, most restricting there citizens from any real ability to keep and bare arms, have the highest murder rates. Chicago has gone pretty far in trying to eliminate their citizens rights to protect themselves, as the gang problem just gets worse and worse. These gun laws don't do a darn thing to stop a gang from using automatic rifles. It's just punishing the law-abiding and restricting them from protecting themselves from these criminals.
Personally, I think the problem is not guns, it is people choosing to murder. A murder is no more or less tragic because of the tool used in the crime. The Rwandan genocide, mostly conducted with cheap Chinese-made machete's in the era of the Kalashnikov is one of, if not the, most efficient mass murders in the history of the world. Solving murder is a goal as old as civilization itself, it is not a goal that is reasonable. Reducing it is a good goal. Making the ~100,000,000 Americans who responsibly own firearms criminals is a political measure, not any kind of a real solution or aid. It does nothing to actually save lives, only criminalizes people who live differently.
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