Frustration with gun violence is running high here in America as one senseless shooting tragedy after another continues to take place. It also is making the world question American values and what we stand for. Dictators and other opportunists are telling their citizens that democracy and the "freedoms" being promoted by America means children can be killed at school and no one cares.

For those of us who support gun rights, offering "thoughts and prayers" as our only response each time a new mass shooting occurs has become a joke. It's time for a rational conversation about gun ownership that parties from all sides of the issue must be willing to honestly participate in.

Before laying out the parameters of that discussion, we had planned to provide some facts and additional context regarding guns and recurring gun violence in America, but we've decided just to get right to our main point: there are two pressing questions that America needs to address on this issue. If we can get these questions answered properly, we should be able to put the issue of gun ownership behind us for years to come. But if all parties won't participate without pandering to special interests or won't put aside their own personal political ambitions, we'll never get past the shouting and ill-will that we face today and we'll never make progress towards reaching a solution that all Americans can live with.

And in this case, we literally mean "live with".

The first of these two questions is this: How do we keep guns, particularly those that commonly are described as assault rifles, out of the hands of people who should not have them? By "people who shouldn't have them" we're talking about groups of people we hope everyone can agree on: convicted felons, the mentally ill, people who have made serious threats against others, people who are untrained in how to safely handle and use a rifle or handgun, etc.

Texan Larry Gatlin of the country and gospel singing group The Gatlin Brothers put the need to address this question very succinctly recently when he said, "I'm a Second Amendment guy. But the Second Amendment should not apply to everyone. It's that simple."

Unfortunately, the NRA and other like-minded pro-gun groups don't have a viable answer to this first question, even when they're willing to try and address the issue of gun violence. Usually they just ignore the question for fear of alienating some of their members or alienating some of their big money supporters. Or, when they do engage on this issue, they argue that the only solution is a good guy with a gun and, therefore, everyone should be armed.

We absolutely agree there are times when a good guy with a gun can make a difference. But not all the time. Not in a dark theater or in a dark nightclub, not when the shooter is wearing body armor, not when the shooter is locked in a hotel room shooting into a huge crowd below, etc. And even if the shooter is subdued or killed, how many innocent people will have been victimized first? We need to be working to prevent these types of incidents, not waiting for an incident where innocent people have been killed or injured before we identify the perpetrator as someone who should not have been allowed to own a rifle or gun in the first place.

The second question America needs to come to a consensus on is this: What is the definition of "arms" as referenced in the Second Amendment to the Constitution? On one extreme, some have argued that anything and everything should be included. Yet even Antonin Scalia, one of the most conservative Justices to sit on the Supreme Court since the 1800's, wrote that the Second Amendment allows that the ownership of "arms" can be regulated.

As a practical matter, virtually everybody would agree that no Citizen should be allowed to own a tactical nuclear device, a surface-to-air missile, or an operational tank. Polling indicates that most Americans would include many forms of automatic weapons in that list of prohibited arms as well. Some Americans even would include handguns in that list.

Yet all of those weapons mentioned above could be described as "arms", so where do we draw the line? We would argue that if America can resolve the first question we posed and thereby get to a point where guns/rifles can be kept out of the hands of Citizens who should not own them, we probably can answer the second question with a list that includes more, rather than fewer, legal weapons. All the more reason to address question number one which, frankly, should be doable if all parties come to the table willing to seriously discuss the issue and, perhaps most importantly, to listen.

We don't claim to have all (or maybe even any) of the answers to these two questions and we don't think any other single individual does either. Business and academic studies we've read show that the best solutions to problems come when a number of people with different points of view meet and discuss an issue. We've also had personal experience in those types of settings and, while at times they can be difficult and uncomfortable, they do seem to produce positive results. As long as the participants truly want to solve an issue and not just score political points.

As to what the possible solutions are on these two questions, we do have our own thoughts, but we're interested in hearing what you have to say. Just remember, though: for those of us who are supporters of gun rights, we had better be ready to honestly participate in these discussions and seriously consider reasonable compromises or we will be looking at two unacceptable results: we'll either get legislation we don't like (because it won't work or because it goes too far) or we'll continue to see strings of innocent people murdered unnecessarily.

Let's talk.

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