The ban of all automatic and semi-automatic firearms

The second amendment is worded the way it is because the founders' underlying philosophy was that as a last resort, the citizens could provide a check on the government's power. The government was created with the sole purpose of protecting the rights of the citizenry. The Preamble to the Constitution states, that sometimes "in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another," a clear allusion to the American Revolution. Basically, if the government ever becomes so corrupted that change cannot be effected by peaceful means, the citizenry better have guns. In the past few years, we have seen unprecedented contempt for the rule of law and the Constitution by our government. While I don't think we're about to slide into fascism, and that this mess will probably be fixed by the next President, it's important to seriously consider how much the current administration has gotten away with. While it's comforting to think that the USA will always be free, it's dangerous to assume this will happen without some formidable safeguards. Taking the right to bear arms away from citizens will only embolden the aspiring tyrants of the the future. To provide some perspective on the statistics you cited in the opening of your argument, in the popular book Freakonomics, the author, Steven Levitt (who has lost a child of his own), makes a really interesting point about how dangerous guns are for children: far less dangerous than swimming pools. Swimming pools are about 100 times more likely to result in children's deaths than guns. Why is there no outcry to ban swimming pools? It's obvious: people love swimming pools and believe that parents ought to assume responsibility for those tragic drownings, and that it would be wrong to deny responsible citizens access to swimming pools due to the mistakes of an irresponsible minority. Guns, though objectively significantly less dangerous, get the bad rap because they do not conjure up happy childhood memories the way pools do. Personally, I'm not into guns at all. I don't own one and probably never will. Hunting morally repels me, but I feel that it's unreasonable to pass judgment on others who have been brought up in very different circumstances than me. I grew up in the suburbs of New York City, and no one I knew (except for my Dad, actually) had guns. I had a BB gun that I'd shoot at soda cans but that's about it. If I'd grown up in a place where hunting was a lot more popular, the probability that I'd like to hunt would have been much higher. The fact of the matter is that lots of people love hunting and nearly all of them do it responsibly, and I think in a tolerant society that should carry some weight. After all, I eat meat like most people, so it's pretty hard to argue against the killing of animals when I subsidize it. Finally, to restate the oft-repeated argument, banning guns will empower criminals. While responsible, law-abiding citizens will be rendered helpless, dangerous people, those with connections to the black market, will have free access. Additionally, similar to what drug prohibition has done, this will make the criminal rackets that sell guns richer, as they'll be able to raise their prices and will have a monopoly on the market.