I'm a fan of guns, but only in games and other works of fiction, where they can do no real-life harm.
I'll admit that some of the knee-jerk gun ban regulations such as banning barrel shrouds (which do nothing to increase the lethality of a weapon and are solely there for a user's comfort), were quite silly, but others, such as the 10-round magazine and semi-auto only restrictions (which DO limit a gun's lethality), as well as the flash hider restriction (which makes sense when you realize it's meant to to limit people trying to hide their gun fire at night) do make sense.
At the heart of the issue is the fact that we are all unavoidably human, or as Christopher Hitchens puts it more colourfully, "we are mammals with adrenal glands too large and prefrontal lobes too small." In other words, it is sometimes unavoidable that our instincts and emotions override our rational abilities. Far too many spousal conflicts have ended with one being killed by another's (legally owned) gun, too many cases of people killing or maiming their peers while inebriated or drugged have occurred, and so on. It is much too easy for all too many people to reach for their guns and end up with death or permanent injuries when they can't or won't stop to think things over, especially with a class of objects that in most cases is really only good for the intimidation, maiming, or killing of human beings.
Even those who have trained a long time such as police officers and military personnel don't always get it right in the heat of life-or-death situations, and they spend much time retesting and requalifying. Hence the need for effective gun regulation.
A good blog summarizing the issues around gun regulation can be found here:
http://www.gunguys.com/
A good website showing how CCW permit carriers can prove "all-too-human" can also be found here:
http://www.vpc.org/ccwkillers.htm
Personally I think the restrictions on certain gun types and ammunition (especially those that have consistently proven themselves to be armour-piercing for police-level vests) don't always go far enough. Why aren't, say .50 Caliber Anti-Material rifles or armour-piercing PDW ammunition
strictly military issue and usage?
Sometimes I wonder about the threads here talking about gun shows--how lax are they? There's always been the problem of straw purchasers (someone who is really buying for someone else) and the fact that these guns often end up in places where they're not supposed to be, such as in the hands of terrorist right-wing militias, or criminals in Canada, or even the drug cartels in Mexico. Easy, unregulated access from gun shows is a source of proliferation in the wrong hands.
I've no desire to start a flame war, but I think this thread needed a little balance. Modern guns, with their power of very easy life or death with little other purpose require strong sense of responsibility and trigger discipline, and the notion that any "common citizen" automatically possesses those hard-to-maintain and easily-lost qualities because of an outdated document more than a hundred years old is frankly, quite silly.