I do realize that back in his pre-cambrian youth, single shot muskets had not yet been invented. So these newfangled "high-capacity" clips are probably downright scary to an emfeebled old man who can't really make a distinction between criminals and law-abiding citizens.

Of course, to a knee-jerk liberal there is no distinction — we're all guilty. Only a government-certified bureaucrat knows what's best. The police will protect us, and have no fear because they will never, ever misuse their weapons or abuse their authority.

Every week in Chicago, criminals kill, maim and wound the guilty and innocent alike. Last month, over a single weekend, 8 were shot to death and more than 40 wounded.

New York City is likewise awash in "illegal" guns as criminals have no problem acquiring them; this July has seen a 28% rise in city shootings since last year.

The streets of Chicago are officially more dangerous than a war zone: Homicide victims in the Windy City outnumber U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan this year.

While 144 Americans have died in Afghanistan in 2012, a whopping 228 Chicago residents have been killed, and the murder rate is up a staggering 35 percent from last year.

In the book More Guns, Less Crime, economist John Lott conducted the largest statistical analysis of the impact of firearms on safety ever performed in the United States.

He found that the gun control advocates -- who had always predicted that concealed carry permits would result in the streets running red with blood, shootouts in parking lots, and the like -- were completely and utterly wrong. To his great surprise, he found that the more weapons possessed by the law-abiding, the safer society becomes as a whole.

In fact, history has proven that the reverse is true: disarming a population is frequently the precursor to genocide. It occurred in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and Cambodia under the Maoist Pol Pot. Millions paid the ultimate price for giving up their firearms -- and their God-given right to protect themselves.