Not being from the USA, I can only scratch my head in wonder at how many Americans truly believe that they should be allowed to own any firearm they like!
I can understand you value the right to bear arms - but I'm sure that the founding fathers were not thinking of machine guns or assault rifles when they drafted the constitution. In those days a rifle took a couple of minutes to load, and then you got off 1 shot.
If you stormed a crowded area with an 18th century rifle and started firing -- you'd be tackled to the ground and subdued way before you got it loaded for the 2nd shot.
Most of the hobby shooting loved by many Americans can still be done without the need to own automatic or semi-automatic weapons. The mass shootings have all been associated with these auto or semi-automatic weapons. So surely limiting the number of rounds per second that a shooter can fire, will dramatically reduce the ability to spray vast numbers of bullets into a crowd.
After Sandy Hook Elementary, and now the Orlando incident (to name but 2 recent ones) -- if people still think that it is a great idea to have assault rifles in general public ownership -- then maybe there is no hope for you!
You do agree on limits!! I mean you can't buy a nuclear device down the local ammo shop. You can't buy land mines. I'm pretty sure you can't legally own an RPG. So how come 'the right to bear arms' is dragged out every time somebody tries to limit the TYPE of guns you are allowed to own? Surely the line can be drawn so that you can't legally own anything that is semi-automatic or automatic??? No??
We did it in Australia. The government changed the ownership laws to make these weapons illegal, and then bought back any weapons that were no longer allowed.
I talk to my American friends about it - and they say -- "Ah but then the criminals will own them illegally anyway". Yep! But they are lot harder to get hold of here now. Your problem is that they are legal, and you can almost impulse buy them when you pay for your gas. Some guy gets angry for being cut off on the freeway, or because he got sacked from work --- having an assault rifle in the car with him can somehow escalate his reaction!!!
Here we have a few beers, argue over a nice looking girl at the bar, and have a fist fight, then make up afterwards over another beer!
There - instead of a fist fight - one guy shoots the other, and then sprays the bar with gunfire, there is a police stand off for 6 hours, and several innocent by-standers are the latest victims of laws that most of the world look on as just plain stupid!
I'm sure I'll get hammered by American gun enthusiasts - but why in the world do you need to 'bear arms' with something that can get off 300+ rounds per minute ? Surely you can do whatever you want for fun, with something that needs to have the chamber emptied and reloaded manually.