I'm with those who favour gun control laws. But this doesn't mean I'm persuaded by every argument adduced in their support. Here's one that I don't find persuasive:
If we truly wish to demystify the intentions of James Madison when he wrote the Second Amendment, we must reconstruct the environment in which he conceived it and recognize that it was a very different time, with very different circumstances, and very different weapons.
At first, success in the Revolutionary War helped the Founding Fathers realize the necessity of firearms. A far-away government imposed taxes without representation, but with an armed citizenry, the colonies had fought for the right to form their own government. It is likely that Madison intended that guns be available if this course of action was ever again necessary.
But now the field has changed. The muskets that the minutemen took up against the British were a good match for the weapons they would be facing on the battlefield. This is undoubtedly no longer the case.
Now there is no citizen armament - and really, nothing short of military aircraft or an atomic weapon - that could match the US military. And even today's Supreme Court would find it hard to permit the construction of backyard missile silos. Regrettably or not, we must concede that the conditions allowing for an armed revolution of the people have long since vanished.
The author conducts a thought experiment in which the American people needs to rise up against a presumably tyrannical American government. Fanciful in present circumstances, but let us just imagine for the sake of argument that this is following a military coup. His suggestion then is that a populace in which gun ownership is very common would be no better placed to oppose and try to overthrow such a government regime than would a populace largely without weapons. I doubt this.
A bad argument against gun control laws that I have seen here and there is that car accidents cause more deaths than shootings do. This overlooks the detail that a car accident isn't (mostly) a criminal offence whereas shooting children and innocent others is one. Governments have a responsibility to prevent such crimes to the best of their ability. The argument from car accidents is a bit like one sometimes used to suggest that terrorist murder is not that big a deal.
