Well, to be honest tla, it's not just about the concern of the loss of guns. It's also a concern about what a lot of people view as a general erosion of personal rights. When you combine that with an inherent, culturally ingrained distrust of the government, things start to get real sticky real quick.
It's okay to disagree about gun ownership, but that's actually kind of an unfair statement to make. As I was explaining to j4d3, here in The States law abiding gun owners have a ton of responsibilities because of both State and Federal regulations. We're not as willy nilly about guns as a lot of people, Americans included, think. When you couple that with the fact that there are a multitude of factors that preclude a person from being allowed to legally purchase a gun, it really isn't a black and white issue at all.
Well, the 2nd Amendment reads as . . . So the "well regulated" part isn't about regulating the right to bear arms, but maintaining a strong militia. Where people get upset about gun regulation is the part that says "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Many people see any laws that dictate what we can and can't do with firearms as exactly that, infringing. The whole issue is very difficult as you can no doubt guess. The brevity of the amendment has left it up for a hot, contentious debate for pretty much the whole history of the nation. Wikipedia actually has a great breakdown on the issue.A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
The concept of a militia is so archaic at this point that we don't even have well regulated militias anymore. We have a standing army. And a standing navy. A standing air force . . . the marines. Hell, we even have the Coast Guard, so isn't that like 2 navies? At any point, unfortunately a lack of guns doesn't necessarily mean there won't be tragedies involving schools and other large public places. People who want to be brutally awful will find a way.
War and I both discovered, in the last gun thread that j4d3 posted, that the potential effects of Gun legislation can be ambiguous at best. Australia seems to be a decent case study, though I have to admit that's the only one we really looked in depth into. I think maybe tomorrow, if I have some free time, I'll read up on how gun laws have affected various nations.