The Price of Life

What is the price of life?  How much are we, as a country, willing to spend to protect the lives of our citizens.  If one were to look at the defense budget over the past years, it would appear that there is not cost too great to protect our country.  Look at the expenditures made in both money and human capital after 9/11.  While terrorists took 2752 lives and there was an expenditure of $1.29 trillion dollars and 6440 American lives, it appears that there is no limit to the expenditures to protect our citizens.  On the other hand, over 9000 American citizens lose their lives every year as a result of being shot by other American citizens.  Over the past ten years, in excess of 100,000 Americans have died from gun shots.  What price should we pay to prevent those deaths in the future?  Dead from citizens with guns is just as dead as dead from terrorists flying airplanes into buildings or blowing up things with shoe bombs.  Why are we not just as vigilant to prevent citizens from killing citizens as terrorists with bombs in their underwear?  While the NRA continue to claims that people not guns kill people, people continue to die from gun shots.  At what point should our citizenry say the 1^st Amendment rights are just as important as 2^nd Amendment rights.  The discussion in the country should no longer be what caused the shooting in Aurora, Colorado but what steps can be taken to prevent a similar event from ever happening again.