I present the following:

I've read this argument before, not only by the author, but other legal experts. The basic proposition of the anti-gun element is that no-one should be trusted with deadly force (firearms). They fail to recognize that all rights come with attendant responsibilities.

For example, although I have the right to freedom of speech, I do not have the right to slander someone. While I have the right to free assembly, I do not have the right to join a mob and set fire to the town. Although I have the right to own firearms, I do not have the right to gun people down indiscriminately.

Gun ownership is not a matter of self-defense, although self-defense is a right. It's not a matter of trust, either. It's not a matter of "scaring" the government into doing what gun owner's want (although it was intended as a check against tyranny). The right to bear arms is a matter of respect and responsibility. It's respecting the right of each and every one of us to exercise deadly force when it is appropriate to do so. It's the responsibility to refrain from exercising deadly force when that is the appropriate thing to do.

Not even a weapon is a danger in the hands of a responsible person with respect and awareness of both his own or other's rights. Nothing is safe in the hands of someone with no respect for the life or safety of others.

--Baloo

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"The United States Supreme Court and lower federal courts have consistently interpreted this Amendment only as a prohibition against Federal interference with State militia and not as a guarantee of an individual's right to keep or carry firearms. The argument that the Second Amendment prohibits all State or Federal regulation of citizen's ownership of firearms has no validity whatsoever."

"The Supreme Court enunciated in United States v. Miller, (1939) what, over fifty years later, remains clearly the law of this country -- that the scope of the people's right to bear arms is limited by the introductory phrase of the Second Amendment regarding the necessity of a 'well regulated militia' for the 'security of a free State.'"

From the American Bar Association.

So, Prof. Eugene Volokh's opinion far from settled. The case of United States v. Emerson currently under appeal to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals should shed some light on the situation. I found the Amici Curiea brief before the court quite interesting.

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