Better to regulate it through State approved Militias, as the Bill of Rights dictates.

We don't need them anymore now that we have the Pentagon.

State approved militias for what? The only ones I hear about on the news wear white pointy bedsheets over their heads or similar ridiculousness.

What's going to come out of this is a ban on assault weapons.

And do what with the 200 million guns already in this country? It is easier for a 17 yr old to buy a gun then a 6 pack of beer.

Why not fix the freaks?

I think the number is closer to 300 million guns--one for every man, woman and child.

What should happen is that we first repeal the Second Amendment and replace it with another one, the wording of which I won't propose right now, that will allow us to still permit gun ownership with stricter regulations.

What we can then do, after that, is require that every firearm be declared and registered, and gun owners licensed. We can ban certain types of guns if it makes sense. Failure to comply with regulations will be an offense and grounds for revocation of firearms privileges. Pretty straightforward.

The State of Louisiana recently tried to and failed.

Gun laws won't stop nuts like this intent on harming someone.

The United States Constitution trumps state law in any controversy, Mr. Reid. That's why we need to repeal the Second Amendment.

The proliferation of guns isn't due to illegal gun ownership. The biggest mass murders have happened with the legal acquisition of firearms. Make it harder to legally obtain weapons. Make it harder for people to qualify for ownership. If laws were useless, then we wouldn't have any.

You can't carry a Burger King or a McDonald's into an auditorium and execute 20 five year-olds.

States with stricter gun laws and lower rates of gun ownership have lower rates of firearms mortalities. States with less restrictive gun laws and higher rates of ownership have higher rates of firearms mortalities. The same is generally true for countries. Gun laws work.

So Steve, what about portable propane tanks? How about fertilizer and oil? Or maybe styrafoam and gas? All of these things can be used to create destruction like this; if not worse. Ban those things too?

Costa Rica has an interesting take on gun laws. There, if you legally own a firearm, you the owner are responsible for any crime committed with it even if you did not commit the crime. It puts the oweness on the firearm owner to secure it from those who should not have the firearm; which is our problem. Firearms in the wrong hands not the right ones; banning guns is not the answer, making guns tougher to find the wrong hands is.

Last I heard, no one was going on murder sprees with propane tanks. Last I heard, there was no public epidemic of deadly styrofoam attacks.

You're being irrational with your argument, and that shows why the Second Amendment is so dangerous. People's passions outstrip their wits.

Columbine, Okalahoma..............you never heard of those incidents? Those both had devices from the materials I mentioned.........

Right after an event like this emotions run high; no one wants what happened, no one. I would put forward that the emotion of this situation is weighing on a lot of people creating the very irrationality you have accused me of; is it possible that this emotion is affecting your arguement, your judgement?

Repealing the Second Amendment is a rational approach to the public health problem of firearms mortalities, and, if you read one of my latest blog entries, I posted "Repeal the Second Amendment" before this latest news happened. I'm not caught up in spur-of-the-moment passion.

Here's a link to "Repeal the Second Amendment," my next-to-latest blog entry on Portsmouth Patch:

http://portsmouth-nh.patch.com/blog_posts/repeal-the-second-amendment

Comparing crime in general to rates of firearms mortalities is misleading. Massachusetts has one of the lowest rates of firearms mortalities in the country.

Take Chicago then; just about the strictest gun laws in the country, how is that mortality rate?

Look at Mexico. They strictly regulate guns but their murder rate is sky-high because Mexican drug gangs buy their guns from United States sources.

Illinois can't screen travelers crossing its borders. Guns flow across state lines.

Harvard Injury Control Research Center,
Homicide:

"Across states, more guns = more homicide"

"Using a validated proxy for firearm ownership, we analyzed the relationship between firearm availability and homicide across 50 states over a ten year period (1988-1997).

"After controlling for poverty and urbanization, for every age group, people in states with many guns have elevated rates of homicide, particularly firearm homicide."

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/index.html

Per capita firearms deaths in the United States outstrip almost every other country in the world.

Second lowest gun death rate in the country is Massachusetts. The issue here is the use of guns to kill people, not simply the crime rate.

Both with liberal gun laws!

The United States Constitution makes provision for allowing changes when necessary. The amendment process is an American freedom. There are plenty of free countries in the world that don't have a Second Amendment to protect them from democracy.

We are in far more immediate danger from our armed neighbors than we are from the government.

It is not about current threats and their viability it is about balance of power. Even the best of intentions can lead to the worst of outcomes. Repeal of the 2nd ammendment is a knee jerk reaction that will eventually yield the worst outcome.

There is no balance of power provided us through the Second Amendment.

The power of the government, if it chose to use it against citizens (which it won't because we are a constitutional democracy), would vastly overwhelm a citizenry armed by the Second Amendment as it is understood today in the Supreme Court.

The Pentagon and the National Security Agency would crush an uprising in the blink of an eye.

The 2nd amendment provides protection from the government? Is that what it says Charlie?

I think you've created a conundrum, the power of the government comes from the people, but government is by the people and for the people.

I agree Ray, and when people run government it can run amok. Which is why the people need the ability to protect themselves from the power of gernment; this is a fundemental principal at the heart of the 2nd ammendment.

@Steve

"The Pentagon and the National Security Agency would crush an uprising in the blink of an eye."

Now it sounds like you are making a case to allow more deadly weapons than we currentlt allow........

I'm not making that case because the Pentagon and the National Security Agency are subject to the political control of the citizenry through representative democracy. We're in no danger from the government because we are the government.

Besides, since when can private citizens arm themselves with spy satellites, UAV drones, attack helicopters and such? We can't. The Second Amendment as a means to revolution is a joke in today's highly militarized, national-security state context. The Redcoats of yesteryear were hardly better armed than the colonials. Today, it's like our soldiers come from a different dimension with their incredibly highly networked combat support systems and science-fiction weapons technology.

And I'm also not making that case because 1) it won't address the problem of excessive firearms mortality and 2) I don't need to make that case because citizens owning more highly sophisticated weaponry isn't a current problem and isn't about to become one.

Charlie, you are reading too much into the 2nd amendment, no where does it say that the right to bear arms is to protect individuals from our own government.

Who gets to determine the criteria that government has "run amok"? As Jefferson wrote, revolution is not to be commenced over trivial slights, so that's why he enumerated the transgressions of the king in the Declaration of Independence.

The election of a black as president who in the mercurial minds of some is wildly perceived as a socialist, is no reason to take arms against our government.

"We are in no danger of government because we are the government"

Stephen, you are right on, this is something Charlie cannot or refuses to see.

Easy access is a problem, but the answer is not "take them all" it is better regulation.

So do you recomend we take away booze from all because some abuse it and kill others?

No one here is suggesting taking all the guns.

What some in the country are suggesting is repealing the Second Amendment because it stands in the way of reasonable gun regulation. Regulating gun ownership and use isn't banning, nor does it automatically lead to banning.

Laws work. We wouldn't have laws if they didn't. We can regulate guns and reduce firearms mortalities.

Stephen - Like you said, laws work . How are those drug laws working?

Last I heard, the drug laws were putting a lot of people in prison. What do you say we try removing the drug laws and then look for signs of improvement?

Those other ways aren't protected by the Second Amendment. We can make laws about them. We can use public power to address those crimes without having the Supreme Court tell us that we can't.

Imagine how much higher the murder rate would be like in Mass. if they didn't have strict gun control?

Maybe we'll just keep saying "repeal the Second Amendment" and it will catch on.

You say this, "How many of those are those by drug dealers and gang members - they still have firearms in Mass with strict gun laws"
That's because they import them from states that have lax gun laws, as if it were just a Massachusetts problem. Mayor Bloomberg and Mayor Menino have both said that importation of banned weapons from lax states is a big problem..

We didn't "give" Mexican drug gangs anything. They came into the USA and bought arms on their own like they always do. The only thing the government did was try to track what's already going on without its assistance anyway.

In Afghanistan, we won.

In Vietnam, we were at war with another government, the North Vietnamese. No parallel exists.

Neither case is/was merely a case of civil war in a population against its own government.

In Afghanistan, if the United States can be called the government there, then we're still in power. We're not leaving Afghanistan for military reasons; we're leaving for a political one. The Taliban is not driving us out; American citizens are realizing that remaining there does not serve our interests better than leaving.

In the United States, there will be a government no matter what happens in a civil war. We wouldn't be swapping what we have now for something that will turn out to be more popular, so the political basis for a theoretical revolution doesn't exist. There's insufficient support for one, and there won't be significantly growing support for one in the foreseeable future.

It'll never happen, and, if anyone tried, they'd be arrested before they could organize enough to gain momentum.

The petition was created yesterday.

You're the one spinning here. I've said nothing inaccurate. You, however, have.

You wrote: "Guns that WE gave them Fast and Ferious?"

"We" didn't give them guns. That part is a falsehood.

Mexican gangsters came into the United States and bought guns themselves through straw purchases because there are insufficient controls on gun sales. They were doing it before Fast and Furious, and they're still doing it now. Republicans in Congress are making federal law enforcement officials afraid to try and do their jobs to protect us from gun crime.

"Fast and Furious" did not introduce anything new into the gun smuggling process that made it easier or more likely that Mexican criminals would purchase the guns that they came to get. All it did was attempt to track the guns after they were purchased the way they have been purchasing them and the way they still are purchasing them. Republican yelling about federal law enforcement attempts means nothing gets done.

Shame on you Tim for politicizing this tragedy. How insensitive.

Right on!

This nut could have done the same thing with a machete. Wanna ban those too? In China there's been a rash of mass stabbings at schools. Should be ban sharp instruments too?

Thank you Read Daly

Nice load of horse poop Mr. Proud Conservative.

If the killers (pick an incident) think that a handgun or assault rifle will magically get them whatever it is they want, why do they kill themselves when they realize the police are on the way?

I would say we brought on a lot of our problems with our ultraconservative, bigoted, hateful, ignorant, me-me-me Fox news crowd. But go ahead and blame the "liberals."

Patriot,
How easy it is to pretend that "we will never understand it."

That is just hogwash.
We do understand it, it's easy to understand. Too many guns in America right now as we speak, in the hands of too many irresponsible people. America is awash in guns, that's the problem, not the solution.

The easy thing to do is to predict that another incident will happen again if the government does not take action right now to restrict gun ownership.

And your Jonestown example is non sequitor.

.
*Any gun not registered will be illegal.
*Any unlicensed person possessing a firearm will be in violation.
*All guns currently in circulation, no matter how antique, decrepit or historically interesting, must be declared and registered.
*Any citizen conforming to the provisions of law will remain law-abiding.

"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."

Repeal the Second Amendment. We don't need it to allow lawful gun possession and use.

It's not for hunting. It's not for personal defense.

It gets in the way of meaningful public action when the Supreme Court can throw out local laws based on arcane readings of a defunct amendment. The Second Amendment was solely conceived for the sake of national security, which is now better provided with more up-to-date means through the Pentagon.

I ask one person where they would start to collect the guns. She said she would start with all the registered ones. How stupid to leave law abiding citizens of a free country standing naked amongst those who are not!
Pearl Harbor!

You're the one talking about "collecting guns." That's a scare-tactic bogeyman.

Those of us who are for more effective gun regulation are looking for just that: More effective regulation, not banning. Believing in registering a car, assigning titles of ownership, and licensing drivers does not mean that we are not out to ban automobiles and collect them for destruction.

Repealing the Second Amendment is not a call to ban guns, nor will it AUTOMATICALLY lead to such a call. Plenty of countries have firearms ownership and firearms usage without having their own versions of the Second Amendment.

Ranting and raving? I'm in earnest conversation. It's not "ranting and raving." I've called no one any names, and I'd like to know where I've exaggerated. By characterizing me unfairly, you're the one engaged in hyperbole.

Gun laws are not in place and not working well enough when we have over 30,000 dead Americans every year from gunshots. More guns equals more gun deaths. That's a very simple correlation borne out in public health studies comparing different countries and comparing different states within the United States.

We can do better and we can do more. The United States is an outlier in gun deaths. States with more guns within the United States are outliers above the average in gun deaths.

Where there's variation, there's cause. We can address those variations by addressing their causes, but we can't do that until we remove the Second Amendment as an obstacle to the public control of gun regulation.

So where's the "ranting and raving" in that? Come on, be fair. You owe me either a defense of your personal offensiveness to me or else an apology.

Guns laws are not in place and not working when anyone who wants one can get a gun. Go to a gun show. Buy a gun in a parking lot.
I don't care what you say or how you say it, there are too many guns, and too many of those are assault weapons.
To say that we shouldn't do anything about it, to give up without a fight is absurd and affront to the memory of 20 6 and 7 year old boys and girls.
The NRA and it's supporters want no regulation on guns. They tried, and almost passed a law in NH that would make it ridiculously easy to get a gun, get guns, get assault weapons and carry them concealed, and anywhere you want.
The idea that the extremists currently in charge of the conversation are responsible, and support reasonable limits on artifacts which are made solely for killing is absurd. The NRA and the free-staters don't want balance, they want it all on their terms.

Simple: No declaration of guns means not law-abiding. Most people want to be law-abiding and will abide by the law. Failure to abide by the law will be punished when detected.

Just because some people fail to abide by the laws doesn't mean that laws in general are useless and ineffective. Just because we have murders, it doesn't mean that laws against murder don't work, so we should legalize it.

There are other countries without their versions of the Second Amendment and they allow private gun ownership for legitimate purposes and there is no threat on the horizon to remove all their guns.

The Second Amendment is making guns more unpopular in the United States by making it harder to regulate them and letting the nutters get guns more easily.

According to the CDC: 31,347 gun deaths for 2011.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm

That's all gun deaths: homicide, suicide and accidents. Suicides can count for two reasons: 1) Guns permit a level of in-the-moment impulsiveness that makes attempts more likely and they also produce more terrible wounds which make attempts more likely to succeed, and 2) other means of attempted suicide don't have Second Amendment protection, which makes more difficult the ability of the public to address their peculiar characteristics.

And part of that history is the American Civil War--a failed revolution that created more than 600,000 dead Americans for no good reason except to make the federal government stronger.

The Civil War was a war against democracy. The American Revolution was a war against a non-democratically imposed government. We live in a democracy today, so there is no good reason for a Second Amendment to protect us against our own government when we can vote in local, state and national elections. The Second Amendment was not written so we could shoot ourselves.

Guns make suicide attempts easier to try and more likely to succeed. Many non-gun suicide attempts fail and are not repeated. Guns make failure less likely.

I don't really care about you at all. I have no idea if you're a man, woman or hermaphrodite. If you're taking it personally, then you're being paranoid, and irrational paranoia is a good reason for you to not have a gun.

I want to repeal the Second Amendment so we can finally get around to making meaningful gun regulation without having to defend it from constitutional challenge. It's not about you, whomever or whatever you are.

The Second Amendment does not declare its purpose to be protecting your family from intruders into your home.

Repealing the Second Amendment is a constitutional means of going about effecting change when a provision of the constitution no longer makes any sense but constitutional challenges to law render meaningful action impossible.

We can still permit firearms ownership without the Second Amendment. Sweden does. They have lots of guns. They just regulate guns more stringently, and they have nowhere near the public health problem of firearms mortalities like we do.

You keep talking about gun bans. Repealing the Second Amendment wouldn't be a gun ban. It would allow us to more effectively regulate firearms purchases, ownership and use through the democratic process.

I'm not calling for gun bans. I'm calling for better regulation, and the Second Amendment is an obstacle to that.

There were bills passed through committee and/or full vote in the NH house last year that would make it illegal to prohibit firearms on public property, allow anyone to carry a concealed weapon without a permit, carry guns into courtrooms, further weaken licensing and make it dramatically easier for ANYONE that wants one to get a gun. It is already very easy to get a gun in NH with no background check through private sale or gun show.
And we can't talk about gun control? We have no gun control.
Machete? You can run from a machete.
Lets turn your argument around - since we can't stop people from killing other people, let's drop all pretense.
Why stop at assault weapons? I should be able to own a 50 cal (oh, wait, I already can), I want full machine weapons (wait, I can get those too), grenade launchers and grenades (hmmm, a little tougher, but I can, Sam I am, I can!), I want a tank, artillery, plastic explosives and mines (I want to mine my front yard).
Why stop at assault weapons? Why can't I have whatever I want? Why ban ANYTHING? I mean people die choking on meat, so since we can't outlaw meat, we should not outlaw bazookas and RPG's, right?
The government has tanks, so we should be able to have anti-tank weapons, right?
They have planes, so we should be able to own surface to air missiles?

@Steve From NH - What you're describing is the liberal philosophy that has led to many of the problems we are now seeing in this country. Kids have been raised for several decades now by parents who advocate letting them "express themselves" by allowing them to do whatever they want, whenever they want with no consequences for their actions. In addition, they were given anything and everything their little hearts desired. Add to that the breakdown of the family unit in this country, the general permissiveness of our society and the virtual collapse of our moral standards and you have a couple of generations of kids who, when they finally go out to face the harsh reality of the real world, cannot cope with any obstacle they encounter. And the simplest way to eliminate the obstacle is to do exactly what they have learned from TV, movies and video games - blow the obstacle away with a few ounces of lead. The liberals can scoff all they want at the right wing conservative moral standards and call them antiquated, outdated, old fashioned, etc. But if those standards were prevalent in our society today, we would not be seeing these mass murders at schools, malls and theaters.

Mr. Dutton, repealing the Second Amendment is not "a way around the Constitution" when the document makes the provision for its own amendment.

The Constitution may be difficult to amend, and that's as it should be, but it isn't impossible, and, if things keep going the way they are with "stand your ground" laws and massive public shootings, then it will get easier and easier to do.

Which is why we need to repeal the Second Amendment.

Then the court can't cite it and strike down public legislation with arcane reasoning running contrary even to previous court decisions.

The real purpose of the petition is bring into the open a discussion about repealing the Second Amendment when the presidency does not have that authority.

Maybe amendment wording can go something like this: "The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is hereby repealed. Congress shall have the power to make firearms legislation."

I'm not married to it. It's just a start. Repealing is important. Replacing is a bit trickier. I'm all for permitting firearms usage as long as the public can retain democratic control of regulation.

Me too. It's a start. Maybe the authority could be shared between state and national levels, but cross-border gun movement is a national issue and concerns Congress.

Thats not going to happen.

There are many - like the Rep. from Texas, and many above - who are so very close to blaming the principal and the teachers - they who won't say "He should not have had an assault weapon", but instead insist that "she should have had a gun".
Listen - 20 kids, 6 and 7 years old, and 6 adults whose job is to teach them were killed by a young man nurtured and shaped by a culture in which it is not only ok, it is encouraged to have a gun and to use it to solve your problems. A young man with obvious mental problems who had easy access to a tool whose only purpose is to kill many people.
I am not talking about laws but reality.
And our answer is that we should strengthen and encourage that culture, and make sure there are more of these weapons available?
It is the job, mission, and passion of those educators in elementary schools to teach our kids in a safe environment. It is not their job to also become armed guards, and I hate to think of the message we are sending to 6 year old kids who go to school and see guns there, too. It is our job to fashion a society in which those kids and their teachers can feel safe in those schools, and we have failed them - they have not failed us, as many seem to believe, we have failed them.
And many, like Charlie W. and the FSP folks who are trying to remove the few restrictions we do have are arguing that since we can't succeed 100% of the time, we shouldn't try at all? More guns, easier access, is the answer?

Wake up on the wrong side of the bed Steve? You sound a little grumpy! Maybe it is good you don't have a gun.

I woke up on the right side of the bed.
There are 20 kids and 6 adults in Ct. who, by virtue of being on the wrong side of an assault rifle, did not.

Explain to me how making assault weapons harder or impossible to get is making it "easier for murderers to kill"?
There is no way to make it "easier for murderers to kill". It is already as easy as it gets, and adding more guns is not going to make it any more difficult.

We do not have very restrictive laws in regards to guns. They do in Massachusetts and Connecticut. So, you say since they don't work in Massachusetts and Connecticut, they won't work anywhere.
But - to get around the restrictive laws in Massachusetts or Connecticut, all you have to do is drive to NH, where anyone who wants to can get a gun with small effort.
No, there are no simple answers. Since when do we stop because the solutions might be difficult?
This man was sick. AND, he had easy access to an AR15 with unlimited ammunition.

Deb , please describe to us what the differance is between an assult rifle and a semiautomatic hunting rifle chambered in a popular varmint ( fox , coyote) caliber.

Steve Forte, not relevant.

Deb is correct in what she says. Stop distracting from the issue at hand.

Steve, are you taking assault rifles into the woods to hunt rabbits? Seriously?

Patriot,.... the man that did this was indeed NOT in the military & neither was his mom. That's my point.

Why can't military folks keep their assault weapons in a barracks? I'm not sure we need a population heavily affected by PTSD having an arsenal in their homes.