WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Foregoing the traditional Mother's Day brunches, tens of thousands of protesters descended on Washington on Sunday (May 14, 2000) to demand that Congress pass ``common-sense gun control'' and try to stem the gun violence that claims more than 30,000 American lives each year.

Oh God, yet another march on Washington. Won't those people ever learn? These things may draw a lot of headlines, but they never do any good. Right? Well, folks, for the good of our country, our children, and our lives, we had better hope that this march on Washington shows some results because gun ownership and the availability of guns in this country is out of control and it's killing us.

That sound you just heard was millions of gun owners and enthusiasts leaping to their feet and shouting, "What's that liberal pinko talking about? By God, we have a constitutional right to own guns and they'll have to pry my gun from my dead hands." Wrong.....well maybe the "By God" part was partially right. They may not have God on their side, but they do have Moses (Charlton Heston) leading the NRA's fight for guns, guns and more guns.

As soon as anyone even hints at an attack on gun ownership in this country, the pro gun lobby smugly points at the Second Amendment as final and total justification for U.S. citizens to own guns. Let's take a look at the amendment in it entirety. For those of you who have never read it, you may be surprised to learn that the Second Amendment contains only twenty seven words which are as follows:

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

That's it. That's the whole enchilada. Pro gun advocates will proudly point to that and say, "See, there it is. We have a right to own as many guns as we want." Well, that's great except that is not what the second amendment says and the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as lower courts, have been attesting to that fact since the latter part of the 1800s As examples:

The Supreme court: Cruikshank v. U.S. 1876, "The right of bearing arms for a lawful purpose is not a right granted by the constitution..."

In 1916, the role of the so called "citizen militia" was formerly supplanted by the National Defense Act, which recognized the National Guard as the "militia."

The Supreme Court, 1939 U.S. v. Miller, ".....the 2nd amendment does not grant the right to bear arms that do not have some reasonable relationship to the preservation and efficiency of a well regulated militia."

Much later, former Supreme Court Chief Justice, Warren Burger, in speaking about the Second Amendment, said:

"The NRA has perpetrated a fraud on the American public."

Two more recent decisions were:

U.S. v. Oakes, 564 F. 2d 387, 394 (10th Cir. 1977), The judges held that the purpose of the Second Amendment was to preserve the effectiveness and assure the continuation of the state militia.

U.S. v. Hale, 978 F.2d 1016 (8th Cir. 1992), the Eighth Circuit stated: "The purpose of the Second Amendment is to restrain the federal government from regulating the possession of arms where such regulation would interfere with the preservation or efficiency of the militia."

There are countless other court decision which, in one way or another, say the same thing and you can look them up for yourself, if you wish. The Second Amendment was created by our wise forefathers to insure that the citizens could form state, city and town armies (militias) to guard against any form of tyrannical government that might somehow come to power. It restricted congress from disarming these militia groups, which, at that time, were comprised of the citizens of these states, cities and towns. Today, the recognized militia of each state is the National Guard, which is still comprised of local citizens, but in a more formal way than were the early militias. In essence, the Second Amendment says that the National Guard of each State has a right to keep and bear arms. We also extend this right to law enforcement officials, as we look upon them as the peace keeping militias for each city and town.

Nowhere in the Second Amendment does it say that citizens, not part of any militia, may own and keep guns. Uh oh, there go the gun people again hollering that I want to take their guns away. No, I don't want to take anyone's guns from them. The gun problem has gone too far, too long in this country to even think about taking people's guns away. It'll never happen and should not happen as we do have constitutional rights against illegal search and seizure.

We can, however come to our senses and insure that gun ownership is tightly controlled. We can see that all gun sales are governed by the same minimum code. If states, cities and counties want to pass stricter gun laws than the minimum code, that's entirely their business. Remember....the Brady Bill (which was fought tooth and nail by the NRA) works. Since it was passed in 1993, homicide by firearms is down by 32 percent.

Even with the help of the Brady Bill, we still have a long way to go in this country.

* US civilians own 250 million guns!

* Firearms killed 60,000 people in the last 2 years!

* Handguns, alone, kill 22,000 people each year!

* Handguns kill 60 people each day (including 12 children)!

* Guns are made every 20 seconds and used to shoot someone every 2 minutes!

Anyone buying a weapon at a gun show should be subject to background checks and all other provisions of the Brady Bill. No one should be able to buy a new or used firearm at a gun show, pay for it and leave with it that same day!! We need child proof trigger locks on all handguns. Smart gun technology (weapons, using sensors, electronic fingerprints, voice recognition, etc. to insure the weapon can only be fired by one person) should be incorporated into as many new firearms as possible. All handguns should be registered and their owners licensed. Gun purchases should be limited to one per month, per person. Assault rifles should be entirely banned from ownership by private citizens. Who, other than the military and police forces, needs an assault rifle? Not for home protection since while taking out the person who broke into your home, you could also easily take out the family in the house next door. For hunting? Not unless you want to bring home that deer you shot as hamburger. Assault rifles have one main purpose. It's to reign as much death and destruction on human beings as is possible in as short time as possible. Not a very noble purpose is it?

We must keep after our elected public officials until they pass new legistation to bring about common-sense gun control. If they will not, we need to elect new public officials that will pass such legislation.

If it sounds like I'm advocating making the purchase of a firearm more difficult than it is now in many parts of our country, as well as making gun owners more responsible, that's exactly what I'm advocating. The purchase of a weapon should never be easy. I say this not to stop any law abiding citizen from buying one or more weapons for home protection or any other lawful purpose, but to (1) guarantee adequate time for thorough background checks on all gun sales and (2) to drive home the point to the purchaser that buying a gun is serious business and should not be taken lightly. The new shiny gun you're taking home has the power to instantly snuff out a life and we must never forget that.

I do, strangely enough, agree with one point the NRA loves to pound us with and that is, we need to enforce the gun laws already on the books more vigorously. The NRA thinks this is enough. I think it's a beginning. Current laws are not enough and they need to be strengthened, but we need to use the ones we already have to their fullest power. We need to do that now.

Finally, to those who say, "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" or "Hey, leave my guns alone and just keep guns out of the criminal's hands," or something similar, let me point this out. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, almost two thirds of the people convicted on felony weapons charges, had no prior criminal history. They weren't criminals when they originally obtained the firearm used in the felony, but became criminals, with a record, with that first violation. So the guy next door with a small arsenal in his den, with no prior criminal history, could be tomorrow's killer. The idea that only hardened, life long criminals use guns to kill people is a myth. You could say we've met the criminals (or outlaws, if you will) and almost two thirds of the time, they are us.

After every terrible tragedy where firearms are wantonly used to murder people, some gun enthusiast will always rise and in a very serious tone say, "Remember, guns don't kill people, people kill people." That statement is idiocy and over-simplification all rolled into one. The sad fact is that people with guns kill people and we must do everything within our power to see that, "common-sense gun control" legislation is passed as soon as possible. To do otherwise is to ignore a serious problem that takes the lives of more than 30,000 Americans each year.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ken Kreps lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife.  He has written a number of published articles, essays and short stories, as well as numerous consumer and business pieces.  Ken has also written scripts for Imagination Theater, an award winning audio drama series heard on over 120 commercial radio stations across the nation, as well as on XM Satellite Radio.   He recently completed four short film screenplays.  For the past twelve years, Ken has concentrated on acting, studying in the Seattle and Dallas areas, and appearing in independent short, and feature films, television commercials and dramas, and various types of voice-over work.

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