After the Connecticut elementary school massacre, there’ll be several calls for repealing the constitutional right to bear arms.
This article points out several aspects of this issue. I do not have answers, yet.
On one hand, the right to bear arms is important for making it more difficult for an oppressive government to gain power. On the other hand, this right is abused by insane people, who then commit massacres. Common criminals are not part of the equation, because a group of armed criminals can always be countered by a bigger group of equally armed law abiding citizens.
One aspect, which seems to be overlooked by both sides of the argument, is the impact of technological advances. Technological advances mean that arms are no longer the only means by which people and governments can hurt other people. Such advances can be heavy armory (cannons, tanks, even A-bombs), cyberspace warfare (breaking into computers and cloud accounts, hacking one’s reputation in social networks), advanced radioactive/chemical/biological poisons, “smart dust” programmed to damage people it encounters, and nominally non-lethal weapons such as tasers.
Another aspect is the practicality of enforcing any bans on weapons. The 3D printing technology will eventually make it impossible to control the spread of advanced weapons by controlling their points of manufacture.
The constitutional right to bear such advanced arms is not as clear-cut. Neither is it clear whether constitutionally protected arms are effective against the new weapons.
