I was applauding Kaul all along, until he added that what's really needed is "a compromise that balanced the needs and desires of gun enthusiasts with the need of society to protect itself ..." And there we part ways.

This is what I want to know: Why do we need to balance the "needs and desires of gun enthusiasts" with anything at all? It is exactly this hedged, liberal urge to satisfy everyone that has gotten us into the dreadful mess we find ourselves in today -- a mess that the writers of the Constitution would have deplored. Do we really believe that Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson intended the citizens of their imagined country to be scared to send their children to school? Why must we listen to the claims of gun lovers, or make any effort at all to satisfy their irrational appetite for weapons? Why should we bow to the rage and hunger of a single-issue lobby? Why should we think for even one more second that freedom means the freedom to own terrifying weapons of mass destruction? The discourse on the pro-gun side of this debate becomes more and more extreme, an endgame in which each one of us -- commuters, shoppers, neighbors, teachers, nurses, friends -- carries a gun, concealed, ready to shoot. Is this the world we are willing to make? If we don't say no, it is the world we will have.

I am no longer an advocate of gun control. I am an advocate of gun elimination.

In this strange, wonderful, unique democracy, we have freedoms no other people have enjoyed. Still, we regulate the swear words people say on the radio. We regulate toys. We regulate broccoli, aspirin and massage. We legislate which trees a homeowner can plant along their curb. We require motorcyclists to wear helmets. We insist on building permits, speed limits, and driver's licenses. We rate movies. We simply prohibit the use of marijuana. But we are afraid to say no to guns.

Guns are, in fact, treated in a completely different way from any other commodity, any other choice. The American government and the American public -- you and me -- are peculiarly passive and even hopeless in the face of the gun lobby. In just the last 10 years, 35 million new guns have been added to the 200 million guns we've manufactured in this country in the 20th century. They've been added to our daily lives, to our shopping malls, neighborhoods, city parks, street corners and schools. According to the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence there is now a gun for every single adult in this country and for every other child. A new handgun is made in this country every 20 seconds. Only the most outrageous weapons -- machine guns and grenades -- must be registered with the government. There are no federal safety standards for firearms. (There are clearly defined standards for stuffed animals, for Christmas tree lights and for cereal.) We allow people to buy lethal weapons at gun shows without even a swift background check. Imagine your worst nightmare, your scariest neighbor, your angriest employee or the most frightening student at your child's high school loading up on ammo this weekend at a convention center near you. It's perfectly legal. It happens all the time, and we act as though there is nothing we can do about it.

In fact, the United States has the weakest regulations and the highest rate of death from firearms of any industrialized country on the planet -- and of many less-industrialized nations. The statistics I use come from Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. If a pro-gun reader wants to challenge these "biased" statistics, I invite him to do so. Show me that it is not true that children in the United States are 12 times likelier to die from guns than children in other industrialized countries. Show me I'm wrong, that it isn't my daughter, my sons, your daughters and sons, your grandchildren -- your hearts -- who are dying. Only cars kill more of us and more of our babies. And still we stand by.

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