It's not the gun lobby thats strong, its the money thats involved. Without money no lobby would have an influence. Kinda sad, isn't it, that the real value behind political decisions and political positions is the amount of money generated in favor of a sector of the social. There are political, democratic values and there are social, economic values and never shall the two meet. Economic values relate to making money. Political values relate to Freedom and equality. Nevertheless, the two can be combined effectively within a democratic politics. The issue is not to exclude one by the other, its to include one within the other.In other words, we can and must protect the Second Amendment, but; that can be accomplished while regulating the easy, unquestioning, availability of automatic weapons that are usually used in conditions of war and assault for the illegal purpose of terroristic killing. I'm sure no one wants to limit the effectiveness of the Second Amendment,only the easy availability by individuals not entitled to that availability and who have an intent to mis-use them. Sure, making money is involved but look at the other side of that issue and consider the lives of children or other human beings. Don't stop the production of weapons, but stop the killings. Thats the issue. There has to be a medium somewhere. The shame seems to be that its become a money issue; not a human issue. The usual position is that if one limits the availability, that means less production,(and that means less money)but, if we examine the question carefully, we can see that it would have no effect on the production, only on the control of the means used by some to make these weapons available to anyone seeking them.(no questions asked) Maybe we should control the lobby. The lobby should insure that these weapons are only for a certain use and should justify that use as a legally accepted use. Why should producers make weapons that have no 'democratic' utility? After all, we produced "nerve gas" for use during war; are we going to allow that to 'go public' also? We need to get our values straightened out.