I think of gun control as all those rules and regulations that are aimed at restricting access to guns. Gun control does not include safety regulations aimed at taking defective guns off the market, nor does it include laws that prohibit firearms to dangerous users, such as children or people with records of relevant sorts of crime or mental illness. The National Rifle Association is intransigently opposed to gun control, yet it is not opposed to the dangerous user exception (as it is sometimes called) to our Second Amendment rights.

Yet a wide gulf does separate opponents of gun control from its advocates. Advocates think there is a big problem in the land, and the problem is guns. There are just too many of them. Opponents, on the other hand, are against restricting access (by "access" I mean, of course, access on the part of competent, law-abiding adults).