One great thing about the US is that states can act like laboratories for testing different laws. Massachusetts has some of the toughest gun laws requiring someone to obtain a gun permit before they can own a gun.

Massachusetts also is second only to Hawaii in the lowest firearm death rate:

http://www.statemaster.com/graph/cri_mur_wit_fir-death-rate-...

The firearm death rate in MA is 1/5 - 1/6 the rate of high death rate states.

I looked into what it takes to get a gun permit in MA and was surprised by how common sense it is. As long as you have a record of no violent felonies and no current restraining orders you must take a gun safety course. Then you need to submit a signed statement to the chief of police in your town from two adults saying you are an upstanding person. This way the police know who has a gun and they are probably best able to judge if you should have a gun.

On the other hand, if we interpret the right to keep and bear arms out of our Constitution because it is inconvenient, it will just make it easier to do the same with due process, which is already on its last legs in the US.

Because amending a constitution is a dangerous thing that should never be done!

Re-read what I said. If you amend the Constitution it's a highly deliberative and drawn-out process. If we just decide that the Right to Keep and Bear Arms in the US Constitution means what it does in the English Bill of Rights though that's not the same thing.

I think we clearly need to amend the 2nd amendment. The text says the government can't stop the guy down the block from having nukes, and that is obviously inappropriate.

I dunno. The definition of a militia is a volunteer organization where people furnish their own weapons. I think it would be hard to argue that personal ownership of nukes serves either self-defence or the militia interest. I do think the machine gun ban is questionable though.

If it said, "the right of the people to bear arms for this purpose shall not be infringed" then I would agree. But it doesn't, it says "[This amendment is important because of militias;] the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." ... with some extra commas that are incorrect now based on how grammar has shifted.

One canon of construction of legal documents is to treat every word as necessary to the meaning. The history and text of the 2nd Amendment suggest that the right to keep and bear arms is allowed for two basic purposes: self-defence (as a pre-existing right and the fact that this is largely copied from the English Bill of Rights where this was more explicit), and the militia interest (again found in both the English Bill of Rights, limiting an individual RKBA to Protestants) and the text itself (which mentions a militia).

The Supreme Court has always said (even in cases where they held a collective right, like Presser v. Illinois) that an attempt at elimination of gun ownership by a state would run afoul with the militia interest by the federal government. This is because the militia interest can only be served by an individual right. You have to be able to bring your gun when you join a militia so you must be able to own one outside this, and so the right has to be broader than the mere militia interest. And I disagree with groups like the NRA here but I think that if the state put forth an inexpensive program for people to learn and be certified regarding gun safety, they could probably require such certification before allowing them to own guns.

Again, I don't see anything in the text or history of the second amendment that would preclude eliminating nuclear weapons ownership. Now, big guns on private warships? That's a more interesting question ;-)

You still need to demonstrate causation. Simply saying 'the US has the highest gun related deaths and the loosest gun regulations' only establishes corralation.

Contrast with Brazil, which has far stricter gun laws than the U.S. and far more gun deaths.

Here's the wikipedia page on gun-related deaths statistics since some people are writing "where's the beef?" comments:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-re...

   US has a score of 10.27 per 100,000

   Canada has a score of 4.78 per 100,000

   Australia has a score of 2.94 per 100,000

   England/Wales has a score of 0.46 per 100,000

   Japan has a score of 0.07 per 100,000

(edit: formatting)

Now you have introduced suicides into the mix. The great majority of gun related deaths in Australia are suicides. More than half of them in the United States are suicides.

Also, the grandparent claim of 400x does not stand up to scrutiny. The rate of gun related homicide in the U.S. is approximately 4 or 5 / 100,000. In Australia, it is about 0.5 / 100,000. That's 10x. Which is still quite a difference.