The right to bear arms? Or the right to die by arms?

Though I own guns, I do not believe they should be exempt from safety requirements, wise regulation, and restrictions. Guns are made to kill. America has an abominable record of balancing an individual’s right to have a gun with the public’s inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Public safety in the company of three hundred million guns should not be a wish or the pipe dream it is today. Children in the United States are twelve times more likely to die from firearms injury than children in twenty-five other industrialized nations combined. Gun murder rates in the United States per one-hundred thousand people are more than seventeen times higher than those in Australia; thirty-five times higher than in Germany; thirty-seven times higher than in Spain; and 355 times higher than in Japan. If the United States respected both the constitutional right to keep and bear arms and the right of its citizens to live on safe streets, these figures would drop precipitously. We should be embarrassed to be first in the developed world for gun deaths—America and Its Guns: A Theological Expose, page 5

<idle musing>
Remember the antiwar song by Country Joe and the Fish? "Hey moms, be the first on your block to get your boy home in a wooden box." That's basically what we're doing by allowing the Gun Empire to set the rules. This book will reveal how they do it...you really should buy this book and read it, or check it out of the library. Somehow, get your hands on this book and read it.
</idle musing>