Hey look, a politics forum where every poster is in agreement and no one has flamed anyone, ever!

That won't do.

Let's kick things off with a question that has always intrigued me. The Constitution guarantees the rights of American citizens to bear arms. Now, in the time of our founders, I doubt they could have imagined the sort of armaments people have access to today. Nevertheless, there are no Constitutional provisions on what sort of weapons a person is allowed to have. So where do we draw the line on what sort of weapons are acceptable? DO we draw a line? Most people will agree that the Constitution protects a person's right to carry a handgun or a knife, but what about an automatic? Grenades? Shoulder-mounted rocket launchers? Chemical weapons? At what point does it make more sense to prevent catastrophe (and protect the "general welfare") by outlawing a weapon than it does to allow an individual to possess that weapon? And if you can make such an argument about any weapon, what's to stop that argument from extending to a handgun?