I should have been clearer.

This is not to call the controversy unimportant. But it does suggest the lines along which 2A supporters should make their case. There will always be a Va Tech or Sandy Hook to whip up excitement. No matter how strict or permissive the laws are, those events will always move public sentiment toward restrictions. Please use the low crime rates in some states (such as mine in northern New England) with relatively mild gun laws in your appeals. Even some Massachusetts and New York people have come ’round once they got here.

Not all Democrats, or even liberals, are in favor of restrictions. It is an urban/rural breakdown. Remember Howard Dean’s line “Hell, this is Vermont, where even liberals own a couple of guns.”

Note also that there are many fully automatic rifles, including belt-fed weapons that are too heavy to be used by one person and are intended to be crew-served, legally in US private hands.

I believe that Switzerland has in the past, and may still, allow private citizens to own cannons.

But all of this is a digression. Surely the 2nd Amendment covers at least military-style semi-auto rifles of the types the gun banners want to make anathema.

The distinction is “bear” arms versus other means of moving them around.

Man-portable is bear-able. Rifles and pistols.

So no artillery, tanks, ICBMs or jet fighters. No crew served weapons, no SAWs, no mortars.

Of course, a man-portable weapon these days can be serious fire-power. There are over 600,000 fully automatic rifles in the private homes of Swiss citizens. They are careful about preventing mentally unstable people and criminals from having them. The Swiss enjoy an enviably low crime rate, and an enviably small, efficient government that knows its place.

Well, you say, “that’s just crazy there would be chaos and anarchy”. To which I say, “fine, let the solution to the problem be solved legally”. If there is a strong need for weapons control amend the constitution, I’m fine with that.

My guess is that most American RKBA advocates would tolerate significant regulation if they believed the other side was arguing in good faith. However, the other side has obviously not been arguing in good faith, since it uses every instance of mass-murder as a pretext to promote legislative, regulatory, “gun safety” and litigation measures that amount to a strategy of prohibition by increments.

As technology changed over time the same basic division was maintained, with indiviually operated, solid firing small arms in citizen hands, with crew operated, shell firing arms in state hands (a shell being thin cased, explosive filled). Magazines on small arms appear circa 1860 soon followed by box magazines circa 1880, in contrast to the crew operated belt fed machine gun circa 1890.

I think it’s clear by now that laws against the bad weapon du jour will generally disarm only law-abiding people. The question then becomes, why do they want to disarm us? And if they don’t trust us with arms, why should we trust them?