Sometimes giving up a "right" is a good thing: the right to own slaves, for example.

Sometimes we find that what we thought was a "good" amendment to the Constitution really needs to be repealed: the 18th (prohibition) for example.

More often, severely limiting one's rights is a good thing.

We no longer, for example, allow Coca Cola to make things go better with cocaine or allow better things for better living through chemistry to give the New Jersey Turnpike that now all but forgotten Delaware distinctive smell.

Some of us would argue that an unlimited personal right to keep and bear arms is about as good for individuals, families and America as slavery, cocaine, and pollution.

Some would argue that the 2nd Amendment should suffer the same fate as the 18th.

Most of us (including the vast majority of those who actually keep and bear arms) argue that, at the very least, some rational limits on our right to keep and bear arms would be good.

Ask a real sportsman, for example, if someone shooting ducks using a shotgun with a spring-wound 15-round combat magazine should have his rights to do so "limited."

Ask the same folks what they think about hunting without a license or taking more game than the law allows.

Most gun owners readily, even happily, agree to limit their "rights" in such cases: for the sake of the wildlife and the integrity of the sport.

They also, by huge majorities, favor rational limits on gun ownership and sales: for the sake of the safety of their friends and families.

Some of us believe Americans might well be able to learn to live with gun laws (and a level of gun violence) similar to those of Great Britain or Germany or Japan.

Others, indeed most of us, agree we could learn to live with a rational system of national registration; closing gun-show background-check loopholes; banning the sale of assault weapons to civilians; and limiting the size of magazines.

Controlling the production and distribution of ammunition for civilian use could also be helpful, as would making gun dealers as responsible as bartenders for selling their wares to the wrong people.

Guns empower people.

Unfortunately they give inordinate and virtually uncontrollable power not only to those to whom such power can be entrusted . . . but to the young, the careless, the self-destructive and the most evil among us.

Too many of those we have loved have been lost . . . to violence that if not unavoidable, was made all-powerful by modern weaponry. If we could have lived with a few limits, perhaps a few more of them . . . friends, neighbors, children, teachers, husbands, wives, presidents . . . would still be alive or well or both.

We, as voters, have the power and bear the responsibility to do as much as we can to help.

"Out the shadows their eyes implore us."