I'm not from this country. Where I grew up, you had to obtain a license to own guns which involved a serious background check and installing a gun safe, bolted to a wall and inspected in advance by the police. You can still go down this route to buy a shotgun, rifles are harder to get a permit for and handguns are illegal now.

Here are a few brief observations, to expand on this subject fully would mean writing a book.

I get tired of people like the poster above, "If you want to be like the outside world, Canada or Europe, do us Americans a favor and move there! It's our constitutional right to bear arms. The United States was founded on this principal."

Yes, the Constitution is an important document, but it's over two hundred years old, much has changed in the interim. Because of this, interpretation is everything and leads to one person arguing with another over which interpretation is correct. What are "arms"? Why can you own a handgun but not a RPG? Who decides? What was the intent? To protect us from a tyrannical gov't? With small arms? Really? Good luck.

Because the articles of the early U.S. are so sacrosanct it seems they can never be changed substantially. It's also pretty apparent they're not working too well. The politicians in this country are some of the most mendacious, corrupt bastards I've ever encountered because they can get away with it. There's certainly no barrier in the constitution barring them from making money through graft. They write oppressive legislation (SOPA, Patriot Act, pick your poison) fund secretive agencies to intercept your phone and email to keep you safe, lock people up for years without due process, etc. etc.

Because of all this, I completely understand those who wish to keep a bunch of weapons around. I get it, Congress is full of fucking snakes. 

There is an alternative: change the system. How to change it is a matter for debate but clinging to a 200-year-old piece of paper as justification for owning a bunch of guns isn't going to help much in the face of the U.S. military, the CIA, FBI, NSA, oppressive legislation and lack to access to representation. If they want you, they'll get you and that shotgun you keep in the closet won't do shit to stop them.

So, a few suggestions:

Stop politicians from taking bribes from special interests. They answer to the voters exclusively. Not Exxon, not ATT, not Boeing, not GE. Those guys can certainly have their say but throwing cash at politicians is destroying this country from within.

Repeal every last line of this oppressive legislation written in the name of freedom and counter terrorism. 

Citizen's United was a giant kick in the balls for every single citizen in the U.S. Most people shrugged, muttered about it and that was all they did which leads me to my final point.

As long as the population is under-informed, apathetic and divided, this will continue and it will get worse. Owning a .45 might gives you warm fuzzes but it won't mean a damn thing in the greater scheme of things.