How about an individual firearm mandate?

There's much debate over the constitutionality of the individual insurance mandate in the recently passed health care legislation. There shouldn't be, but there is. I believe the majority of Americans understand that the individual mandate, forcing every man, woman and child to purchase a government-prescribed health insurance policy essentially as a condition of their birth, violates the Constitution. In fact, the Declaration of Independence is quite clear: we are all "endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of Happiness." The individual mandate automatically places constraints upon every citizen. There is no liberty in force. The federal government that was bound by the people has turned those shackles upon the governed.
One obvious argument posited by those favoring the mandate is that universal coverage only works when everyone is covered. It is therefore viewed as a benignly pragmatic solution to a general problem in regard to the general welfare clause of the Constitution, which allows the federal government to enact certain laws to provide for and promote, you guessed it, the general welfare of the people. In other words, the argument is that it works to the general well being of every citizen to mandate insurance coverage or levy fines. But this is a flawed argument based on too broad a premise, that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one. (Apologies to Mr. Spock) The history of this country celebrates the power and ingenuity of the individual, not the disordered weight of the collective. Individual decisions made freely unleash and unbind the individual from the impediments of an unwieldy, ponderous collective. Think of it this way -- a small knife does a much better job of opening the box your new 50 inch plasma TV came in than a chainsaw. Okay, not the best illustration, but it speaks to a better point. The individual, small as he or she may be, making individual decisions, is the basis for the monumental success of the American experiment, not some enormous, lumbering mass of a collective.
So if the insurance mandate is so vital to the general interest, it should follow that there are also some other instances in which a mandate would serve the general well being of the American people.
For example, perhaps it would serve the general interest to mandate that every American must buy a gun. It's a dangerous world out there. North Korea is ruled by a crazy man with nuclear weapons. Iran is ruled by some crazy clerics who want nuclear weapons. China is undoubtedly getting anxious to at some point get a return on their $7 trillion dollar loan to us. Is it that unreasonable to assume that, given the attacks of Pearl Harbor or September 11, there is not at least someone, somewhere in the world who has an axe to grind? Therefore, if every American citizen were armed, perhaps another terrorist attack could be thwarted and America would be safer. And what about domestic crime? Again, it’s a dangerous world. Perhaps if every American were mandated to own a gun to defend themselves, crime would be diminished. Perhaps if every American were required by law to own a gun it would provide for and promote the general welfare of the American people.
It's like those algebra problems that used to give me fits. If X equals Y, and Y equals Z, they X equals Z. If the federal government can mandate one thing, naturally it follows that they can mandate another, and then another, and then another. In the end, X equals American citizens as slaves to their government and a formerly representative republic now resembling a feudal fiefdom.
I kind of like the gun mandate idea. Good luck getting the Left to sign off on that one...