The video games flap is just another moral panic. In the 50s we had comic books turning kids gay, in the 80s we had Dungeons and Dragons leading to devil worship, in the oughts and teens we have vidja games causing spree shootings.
I think the right to firearms occupies an important spot in the protection of personal freedom as that concept is understood in the US. I'll note, however, that the threat to personal freedom that the right to firearms was intended to protect is best represented, in modern times, not by the national military but by local and federal law enforcement.
It's quite clear, however, that we need to work pretty hard on our ability to prevent firearms from getting into the hands of those who should not have them. In large part that will involve "enforcing the laws that are already on the books", as the NRA rallying cry goes. But it will also involve new legislation, since NRA lobbying has effectively gutted law enforcement's ability to fight black market firearms (witness that the ATF hasn't had a permanent director for six friggin' years). Legislation to restrict weapon types is not needed; the types of weapons that Feinstein and others want to ban--"assault weapons", to use the ridiculous term being bandied about--participate in something like 2% of gun violence. What we need instead is, among other things, heftier penalties for straw buyers, relaxed standards on warrants for straw buyers (currently, investigators must show specific criminal intent for each and every gun in a suspected straw buy--that a particular buyer purchases well over their yearly income in guns every month, and that guns purchased by that buyer show up with great frequency at crime scenes in Mexico, is not currently considered to be enough evidence to prosecute), and universal background checks.
The complaint that is lobbied most frequently against such measures--especially universal background checks--is that it will make it easier for Obama to collect our guns when he finally makes his move. These complaints are completely ####ing retarded. There's no other description for it.
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