Guns for everyone?

Ok, so there’s a big gun debate going on in America right now. I'm not entirely sure what the sides are, but I know the two opinions. One side wants to ban guns (or at least constrict the rights of gun ownership) while the other side wants more guns.

Personally I'm happy with my country and its policy of no firearms; however the things that work in one place won’t necessarily work in another. In this case especially I don't think instantly banning all firearms is a viable method for solving the America gun crime problem.

However there are some things that I don't understand. The chief of which is; why is it legal to own automatic weapons, shot guns, sniper rifles and in some cases grenade launcher attachments? In what legal scenario are any of those going to come in useful? Seriously.

Also why is it legal to own more than three guns per member of a household? I've seen gun advocates on the news talking about how they have their guns to protect their family, some even talking about owning fifty guns, but surely at some point they are more of a hindrance than help. There is no situation I can think of that you would require fifty guns to protect your family, unless you plan to hand them to the enemy and run while they're weighed down.

Why do people have such a problem with background checks on guns? I mean surely the background check isn't that big an inconvenience to make sure that crazy people and murderers don't get one legally. Isn't the fact that someone can't wait three says (or whatever it is) for their background check to come through a good indicator that he or she shouldn't have a gun? What do they have to do right now that requires a gun?

But as I say, banning guns isn't the answer. It worked in England because we didn't have guns everywhere. Taking away our guns was like taking away our missile launchers, it only hurt a few people and the criminal element weren't so over abundant with the weapons that they were now clear to run rampant.
America, however has too many guns already. You take away all the guns from the nice people and all the bad people will overrun the country. America's guns in the hands of honest, good people is effectively their nuclear deterrent against their own criminal element. Take that away and there’s nothing stopping them. The police are such a small fraction of the country that there is no way they could stop it.

I personally don't know how gun control in America can be fixed, but when a mentally unstable person takes the legally obtained guns from his mother's shelves and kills twenty children and six teachers at an elementary school you can't deny that something is definitely broken.

How-the-hobbit-should-have-ended.
- James