Bearing Arms
There have been a lot of discussions about restricting the rights to own and bear arms in the United States. Unfortunately, a very large number of the arguments consuming our attention are grossly uninformed, misinformed, and even fabricated. In addition, the vast majority of arguments narrowly focus only on the naïve fantasy that if law-abiding citizens are forbidden to bear arms, criminals would be far less likely to possess them. One needs only look to Mexico to see the futility of that line of thought.
This article attempts to establish an educated overview of the subject, although it only skims the surface of the topics presented here. I will ignore side issues such as gun collecting, hunting, and sport shooting, as I believe they are only distractions and have little to contribute to main reason that the founding fathers were so insistent to preserve the right to bear arms as to reaffirm it with the Second Amendment.
I have also included numerous reference link in red that open in a separate window/tab, not only to provide verification of the facts presented, but also to give you easy access to more details and additional (though sometimes morbid) personal stories and perspectives. I encourage you to use them as much as possible. Unfortunately, many of these original references have disappeared from the internet as of this update, so those links have been removed from this article as well.
(This article consists of multiple pages; click the NEXT> link on the bottom-left of each page to continue.)