[WS:] If it is so good, why is it so bad?
You cannot take regulation out of social context. In some places a light duty lock on the door provides more than enough security, while in other places one needs steel door and several heavy duty locks. It is absurd to expect a $6.95 Kwikset to provide sufficient security in places like NYC.
It is clear that - given the availability of firearms in the US and the every high by international standards gun related death rates - the existing regulations do not work, even if some gun owners find them cumbersome. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and it makes little sense to claim that we have adequate gun regulations when thousands of people are being shot every year. It is like saying that operation was a great success but the patient died.
I am not in favor of legislating every social or moral problem - and if that means anything, I consistently vote for liberalization of laws even in the areas that I personally find objectionable, such as gambling in MD (unlike most of my liberal friends.) But it is one thing to deregulate a morally or even financially objectionable activity, such as drug use or gambling, but a different thing to deregulate an activity that is certain to produce deadly consequences for the public.
In a different society, in which all individuals would take their responsibilities very seriously, the existing level of firearm regulation would probably be too onerous (albeit one wonders why one would need firearms in such a society in the first place.) Unfortunately, it is quite obvious that we do not live in such a society and the existing approach does not work very well, judging from the number of gun-inflicted deaths. It does not seem very rational to me to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect different results. Perhaps it is time to try something else, no?
And one more question - why is it that gun regulations are seen as onerous only in the US but not in any other developed country?
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."