liasWait I though guns were made to protect us. When the 2nd amendment was adopted was this really what they had envisioned?
The second amendment was more adopted over anything else for the purpose of protecting Americans against tyrannical government. It hadn't been long since British colonies had issued oppressive taxation, so it was natural then for Americans to feel the need to use them to protect against tyrannical government.
Today, the climate around guns has shifted to the sentiment you were talking about, that guns are a fundamental right needed for self-defense. Yes, some people will still refer back to the original constitutional intention, but the consensus among advocates for easier access to guns isn't driven by that as much anymore.
The thing about instances like this is that while they're tragic and horrible, handguns are still responsible for the far majority of homicides with firearms in the U.S. The shooting here was done with a handgun, but most of these mass shootings are carried out with a certain type of more powerful semi-automatic rifle. It leads to advocacy against these types of guns, but preventing mass shootings like this really would only be minimal to reducing the rate of gun violence in the U.S. as a whole. Shootings like these stand out more because they're sudden, they're vicious, and they're callous. What doesn't get as much attention is the fact that if you really wanted to significantly reduce the overall firearm homicide rate, you would need to find a way to stop gangs from getting handguns, because that's where most of it comes from. If you saw news reports every single time there was a shooting in a bad area like Oakland, Detroit, or Miami Gardens, there wouldn't be airtime for anything else. Unfortunately, a huge part of the problem we face in the effort to reduce America's overall crime-rate is that getting handguns out of the hands of people in gang-infested areas, and handguns in general is very difficult to do. Additionally, many people in those areas may want a handgun to protect themselves, and that's quite reasonable in their situation and climate. Until that happens, regardless of how limited semi-automatic rifles with huge clips are limited in access, America will always have a firearm homicide epidemic.