The people who frame the second amendment debate as a fight over "gun control" feel they have the Constitution behind them.  Any sort of registration or regulation is therefore a threat to their freedom.  However, we do have the opportunity to change this framing in a way that does not threaten our freedom but still addresses the massive amounts of gun violence in this country.  We call it "gun responsibility".

The Environmental Protection Agency has a term they use when deciding who is to be tapped to pay for clean up of an abandoned, contaminated site.  It is called the Potentially Responsible Party (PRP).  Under this definition, the law may go back through time to all the previous owners and users of a property and hold responsible those who contributed to the environmental disaster on a privately owned property.  This has two outstanding points.  First, it protects new owners from cleaning up and being fined for damages created by previous owners.  Secondly, it helps keep the government from having to pay for these cleanups alone.

If this principle is applied to assault weapons, large ammunition clips and perhaps all other guns, the problem of "gun control" becomes an issue of "gun responsibly".  This places the responsibility of regulation and disposition of weapons not in the hands of the government, but now in the hands of the very people who demand unlimited weapons access.  This does not mean that Americans may run around packing bazookas and firing at will.  Rather it puts the onus on the gun owners, sellers and manufacturers as PRPs for what happens down the line throughout the life of the weapon.  

Once every entity and person can be held legally and fiscally responsible for the outcome of the sale of a weapon, you will see very strict guidelines come not from the government down but rather from the manufacturers up.  If a company, a seller, an individual owner may be sued and/or jailed for a massacre committed with a gun that was in their possession, background checks will become extremely thorough.  Records outlining the history of the weapons will become detailed.  Protection of weapons from theft or misuse will rise dramatically. And safeguards and measures both currently available (such as fingerprint recognition and gun locking) and yet to be developed will become standard.  

Placing the responsibility for the gun violence where it belongs, with those who actually make and own guns, would go a long way toward making America safer for the rest of us.