> The idea that the US constitution allows all and any weapons is irrational and dangerous.

That is absolutely true, and only real lunatics believe otherwise. Few want mom and dad to have an M-60 machinegun around the house, or a Stuka dive bomber, for example.

And the courts have never suggested that such things should be legal.

The real problem, however, as several people have said, is first, that there are 200,000,000 legal guns already and probably 100,000,000 illegal ones in the hands of gangsters who at least have had the decency not to blast everyone in a crowded theater.

And second, that it's too freaking easy for dangerous people to get guns, and to get 100-round Holmes-style ammo drums so that they don't even need to reload very often. And with a population of 300,000,000, you can imagine how many people are potentially dangerous.

But most aren't. There's the rub. The challenge is to improve the situation. In theory the Second Amendment could be revised or repealed by Congress and a vote of two-thirds of the states, but remember that, at least till now, Congress won't even repeal the gun-show loophole. Also, it's bad precedent to mess directly with the Bill of Rights.

I wonder now whether the amendment was ambiguously phrased on purpose. Maybe the framers couldn't quite come to agreement either, except for the point that a musket-armed citizenry would help to deter the aggressors of the day, and would allow frontiersmen to defend themselves forever against raids by Indians, Frenchmen, Spaniards, and the British. Under that hypothesis, they'd be leaving it for posterity to sort out.

Someone must know.