Actually, this question begs a different question. Are laws banning the possession of fully automatic weapons (machine guns) constitutional?
Before I offer an answer, I would first establish that the right to defend my life and the life of others must first be justifiable. It must also, to the extent practical, not present a threat to others. Consequently, I can’t use a nuke to defend myself if that nuke will kill innocent people. On the other hand, I could use an anti-tank gun against an armored vehicle that is unjustifiable in attempting to take my life.
That leads to one more question and that is to what extent may I defend myself against the deprivation of my liberty? If the jack-boot thugs are coming in an armored car and they have a reputation for imprisoning and killing, can I can them first?
I have some opinions but just throwing the question out.
By the way, any law prohibiting ownership of automatic weapons is unconstitutional, no ifs, ands or buts about it.
There is NFA 34(?) which restricts possession of FA weapons but in most states, after local sheriff hoops and batfe hoops you may have one. NV is one such state as is FL and MS. I know there are lots more.
Your question devolves to the issue of controlling the weapon. Basically, once you start to fire more than one controlled round, you are introducing an element of randomness. In a three-round burst, that randomness is limited to a very small area, and that area is under the shooter’s control. If you detonate a nuke, that randomness is in a somewhat larger controlled area.
And I would say that the 1st Amendment only protects the controlled use of firearms, because concurrent with the right to self-defense is the responsibility of controlling the weapon.
So the legal lines between freedom to use a weapon, and a limitation of that right, IMHO, would be a discussion over the legitimate use of randomness, which is ultimately situational. For example, I think ALL small arms, including grenades and RPGs, are pretty easy to justify for the same reason the military uses them with relative and appropriate precision and control. Above that though, the line gets fuzzy unless you have a specific target in mind for a specific weapon that could be reasonably seen as being needed for self-defense.
In the 1700’s, you had edged-weapons, rifles, bombs and cannon. That’s pretty much it, and it was all justifiable for use by a private person for self-defense or defense of home and family. Now, technology has gone a bit beyond that. But surely police weapons are easy comparisons of things that should be also available to civilians.
People argue that police need more firepower to protect themselves. But the advantage the police have is organization, numbers, backup, tactics and time. There is almost zero need to have SWAT teams. The whole hostage scenario is virtually the last use of these teams in actual reality - and when ther is an active shooter somewhere, many real-life scenarios have shown the SWAT teams are NOT sent in, even when hostages are screaming for help, in order to not endanger the police. Why? Because POLICE HAVE NO RESPONSIBILITY TO SAVE ANYONE.
And the ONLY real responsibility of the military is to destroy their targets, whether they be material or people.
FULLY armed civilians under the 2nd Amendment are, I believe, the proper solution to fill the gap between those two government forces.
And statistics have shown over and over that where there are armed civilians, violanet crime plummets. Because the bad guys are ALREADY armed, so gun laws ONLY disarm the victims. That liberals are able to reverse this obvious truth is proof that the actual purpose of public education is to destroy the ability to think.