I'm of the belief that when the Constitution of the States was written they didn't have any conception of the weapons that you can get now also most people back then needed guns to kill things for tea, whereas now you just go to the fridge/freezer, and open the door.
Apologies if something like this has already been said. If it has, just consider this my agreement.
Lemme get this out of the way up front: I don't like guns. I don't like fanaticism over the right to own them. I just don't. Frankly, I wish we could outlaw the damn things and/or retrain our population to not need them, not think they're cool, etc.
That said, I don't actually want to take away the right to own them (yes, I know I'm contradicting myself; this isn't a black and white issue). Ethical hunters? Yes, have some guns. Certain high-risk government employees? Sure. People in crime-ridden areas who can justifiably keep them for self defense? Go nuts! (Well, don't go nuts. Have some sense. If everyone in your crime-ridden area had some sense, maybe you wouldn't need a gun at all.)
The real problem I have with outlawing them, though, is that doing so would set a
really bad precedent and leave the Bill of Rights open to other changes. The founding fathers showed a great deal of foresight when they wrote it, but
damn I wish they'd left out the bit about the right to bear arms, or had somehow been endowed with the ability to see the mess it would cause 230 years down the line. Yes, it was pertinent in 1776; not so much in 2010.
Anyway, the way I see it, guns
do buy us our freedom, but not in the sense the gun nuts would have us believe. I believe they buy it because by keeping the right to own them sacred, we are forced to keep the rest of the rights set out in the first 10 amendments sacred, too.