All Real 'Gun-Control'
Conversations Boil Down To This

I have spent a great deal of time over the last two decades debating 'gun-control' advocates both within the United States and abroad. Naturally, the circumstances and details of these debates can be different, but the fundamental claims they make are broadly the same. Here is an attempt to distill into one conversation the criticisms that commonly appear, and the sound arguments I have found effective in countering them.

They often begin with something like: "Charles, we have to do something about guns."
"Okay, I'm listening," I respond. "What do you want to do?"

I want common-sense 'gun control'.
Such as?

Well, we could start by accepting that the Second Amendment doesn't even protect the right to keep and bear arms. That idea was made up by Antonin Scalia in 2008.
Ah. I'm afraid that you've fallen here for a debunked conspiracy theory. In truth, the right to keep and bear arms has been a part of American life since the 17th century. It was respected in colonial America—and in many colonial and state constitutions—long before the Constitution was written; it was acknowledged and reaffirmed by every major legal scholar of the 18th and 19th centuries; it was explicitly extended to all Americans by the drafters of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, the two postbellum Freedmens Bureau Acts, and the 14th Amendment; and it was accepted by 80% of the American public prior to the Supreme Court's decision in Heller. The U.S. Bill of Rights protects individual liberties; there is no such thing as a "collective right" in that document. The right, as the Second Amendment makes clear, is "of the people." .....