What is a Proper Balance?

I have to admit that I favor President Obama's proposal to limit military style automatic weapons and gun magazines and am glad that NY State has passed such a law.  We don't want just anybody to have shoulder fired missiles or bazookas, why would we want just anybody to have a military assault rifle?

We cannot have 1st responders worried about people assassinating them when they get somewhere (like they were in Rochester).  We need to minimize the risk of automatic weapons killing many more people who might otherwise escape if only non-automatic weapons were available.

And I, for one, do not want to be anywhere near a private citizen pulling out his concealed revolver to defend citizens from another armed person?  Stray bullets flying around rarely fail to hit an innocent person.

But I do recognize the right of every individual to own a hunting rifle and I reluctantly recognize the right of every individual to defend themselves in their home, although that leads to many unfortunate incidents every year.

What we must have is a systemic solution for is the following:

1)  Preventing people from going to more liberal gun rights states and bringing illegal weapons back to more conservative gun rights states.

2)  Preventing people who cannot handle weapons responsibly from having access to them.  This might have prevented all 3 Colorado shootings.

3)  Because people's mental makeup changes over time and family members mental makeup can change over time, we must limit access to automatic weapons and their large magazines.  This is the only thing that would have surely reduced the number of dead from the Connecticut, Virginia Tech and Colorado shootings.

Unfortunately, nothing done now will have any immediate effect because the existing hardware will float around the country for the next 50 years at least.  But at least, we will start to make progress.

I welcome any counter points from my friends who are gun owners.