One of the worst aspects of the aftermath of a national tragedy like the school shootings at Virginia Tech is watching the rush by many on the Left to politicise it. Most Americans are spending the first few shocked days mourning those who died, recognising the heroes and offering what comfort we can to those who survived and all their families. Opponents of the Second Amendment have been busy dusting off the same old arguments, giving them a new coat of paint and deploying them in their misguided attempt to bring totalitarianism to America.

Law-abiding gun ownership has long been considered a mark of maturity and responsible citizenship, and is an integral part of our national character. The first thing a tyranny or dictatorship must do is deprive the people of a means to resist. For this reason and many others, the government was forbidden from interfering with "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms" by the Constitution. It's ironic that Liberals -- the same people who scream about the destruction of the First Amendment because someone's chats with known terrorists might be tapped -- are stepping right up to demand we surrender a right they don't like quite so much.

Many Liberals feel that the reason for the tragedy at Virginia Tech was that a person had a gun in that building. On the contrary, the reason for the tragedy was that only one person had a gun in that building. Trapped by chained doors, with campus police focused on the building in which the first two killings took place, the students and teachers had no way to defend themselves. A single person with a weapon could have saved dozens of lives.

School shootings have been thwarted by private gun owners before they reached the notoriety of a Columbine or the death toll of a Virginia Tech. In 2002, for instance, armed students at Appalachian Law School confronted and subdued Peter Odighizuwa, who had begun a killing spree by shooting the Dean, a professor and a student. In 1997, Pearl High School's Assistant Principal Joel Myrick retrieved his handgun from his truck as Luke Woodham killed two fellow students and wounded seven others with a rifle. Myrick stopped Woodham as he left to continue his attacks at the nearby junior high school, holding his gun to Woodham's head until police arrived. The media downplays or flat-out ignores the fact that guns can save lives, too -- they're just a tool.

The Liberal answer to criminal use of guns is to get rid of guns. Well, that sounds simple. After all, getting rid of alcohol with the 18th Amendment worked all through the 1920's, didn't it? One is forced to wonder how they plan to implement this new Prohibition. House-to-house searches? Random pat-downs on the street? Checking every American's credit card records for "suspicious" purchases? Metal detectors and x-ray machines on every street corner? Too obvious. Instead, some Leftists plan to remove our Second Amendment rights by making them too difficult and expensive to exercise.

Democrats in Pennsylvania, for instance, are trying to push legislation that will force law-abiding gun owners to pay a fee for each gun they own every year, as well as submit to full background checks and fingerprinting. A registration card will be issued for each gun that is approved, and its owner must carry the card with the gun at all times. Guns must be completely disassembled or locked up when not in use, reducing their self-defense value to zero. Annual registration renewal applications will require the owner's name, age, gender, Social Security number, business address, home address, telephone number, date of birth, citizenship status, and any other information that "the Pennsylvania State Police may deem necessary to process the application."

PA House Bill 760, introduced a month ago, also specifies that anyone who sells a gun must notify the State 48 hours in advance of the sale, and the State must be notified within 48 hours of any change in one's registration information. If this bill becomes law, it's hard to imagine the size of the bureaucracy that will be needed to enforce it. And criminals, of course, will simply fail to register their guns. Law-abiding citizens will be utterly reliant on the police for protection from gun-owning criminals. But police cannot be everywhere at once, nor would most of us want to live in a country with that kind of pervasive government presence.

In neighboring New Jersey, already a near police state for gun owners, the Democrats plan to "crack down" on ammunition sales. A recent state commission recommended that every gun owner should have to obtain an ID card that would contain a list of his or her guns with serial numbers. The gun owner must show this card in order to purchase ammunition, and it would become illegal to possess ammunition for a gun one does not own. Stores would have to record the amount of ammo sold for each gun. Criminals would simply drive to another state to purchase ammunition for their unregistered guns. Of course, if the Left tries to take this sort of legislation country-wide, black-market reloading will be as big a business as bootlegging in the 1920's.

Virginia Tech, like many colleges and all lower schools across the country, was as close as possible to the Liberal dream of an unarmed populace completely dependent on the authorities for protection. No one was allowed to have a gun on campus except for the police. The last attempt to change the law that allowed the school to restrict Second Amendment rights was killed in subcommittee more than a year ago. All those who obeyed the law were rendered defenseless by it. The one man who chose to break the law was able to kill with impunity. Let's make that universal, say the Liberals. Does that make sense?

We don't ban cars when bad drivers take lives. We don't ban medicine when abused drugs take lives. We don't even ban government when bad laws cost lives. Let's not react to a terrible crime by punishing the law-abiding citizens among us... people who might be able to prevent similar tragedies in the future.

Joe Mariani is a computer consultant born and raised in New Jersey. He now lives in Pennsylvania, where the gun laws are less restrictive and taxes are lower. Joe always thought of himself as politically neutral until he saw how far left the left had really gone after 9/11. His essays and links to articles are available at http://www.guardianwatchblog.com/