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Driving is a necessity for our economy. Gun ownership is not. But even so, car ownership is much more strictly regulated than gun ownership, theoretically because we have a constitutional right to gun ownership but not to car ownership.
But the interpretation that the 2nd Amendment established a personal right of gun ownership is a modern 20th century concept created by the supreme court and is not inherent in the provision itself. The historical record of the constitutional convention clearly shows that it was a compromise in protection of "state's rights" in order to get the states to approve the new constitution. At a time when the colonies were very afraid of another despot arising out of their new federal government, the states didn't want to disarm and turn over all military protection to a new federal government. So, "[u:1pcz2z84]for the purposes of maintaining a well regulated militia"[/u:1pcz2z84], the right of the people to bear arms was protected.
In the intervening 200 years, the states have ceded control over the US military to the federal government, even while maintaining state militias for safety and security issues that arise within their states. So i suppose if you are a member of a state-controlled militia, the 2nd amendment protects those soldiers' right to have guns. But the amendment was never about hunting, or personal protection. If anything, it was about the states' right and ability to protect itself from the federal government. The question is: do we still want to protect the right of states to engage in armed cecession or revolution? If not, then the 2nd amendment should be repealed and guns can be treated like cars -- a useful but dangerous tool that is subject to regulation for the protection of the public.
Otherwise, why not say the 2nd A protects all kinds of "arms". Machine guns, bazookas, cannons, tanks, long-range missiles... Remember, the only one who can stop a bad terrorist with a bomb is a good terrorist with a bomb.
And that's what this is about... domestic terrorism. There is a strain of our American culture that wants to maintain its ability to stage an armed insurrection against the federal government, as they once did 150 years ago. After that war, we should have repealed the 2ndA so we didn't have to suffer through another civil war or violent internal revolt, but we did not. Disarming the south would have been too difficult and would just have prolonged the war, so we left it alone. But the 20th century bullshit about hunters' rifles and pistols use for self-protection is a big con by vested economic interests in the gun industry. I don't give a shit if a hunter wants to collect hunting rifles, as long as they are not military grade assault weapons. And i also don't give a shit about somebody who wants to keep a pistol in their house because they're deluded themselves into thinking it offers them protection (rather than actually increasing their risk of harm, which it does). That's up to the person, as long as they're not carrying them out into the public, where other people can get killed. And as long as the rifles and pistols are registered so they can be accounted for, in case they're used to commit a crime or get stolen, and as long as the purchasers don't have a history of mental illness. I think reasonable people could find a system of enforceable regulation of firearms that met the needs of most gun owners who truly used them for hunting or home protection.
But this is not about reasonable people. This is about a segment of society that wants to keep the possibility of revolution alive, motivated and funded by economic interests who want to keep their industry profitable. In a democracy, though (or a republic, in our case), the majority can decide that both our history and current events give us more than enough just cause to repeal this outdated law and say once and for all that, if you want to change the government, participate in it, don't try and do it by force. We're grown up enough for that now, i think. Weapons technology has made every gun a weapon of mass destruction, so the cost is just too damn high to continue allowing the misinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment to keep us in a state of perpetual war.
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