The line is not drawn between inanimate objects.
The line is drawn between people who use them responsibly, and those who demonstrably will/do not.
Without diving too deeply into the "WMDs and RKBA" debate, as this thread is about Rudy, let me say: so long as someone can safely store, handle, use and apply a weapon - any weapon - they have a right to do so. If reasonable people conclude someone is using a weapon in an unsafe manner, they have a right to infringe on that right (which returns once they can be safe again).
The difficulty with WMDs is that when used, the operator cannot be sure that innocents are not in harms way, save in rare and remote circumstances.
The line is not drawn between inanimate objects. The line is drawn between people who use them responsibly, and those who demonstrably will/do not.
Good points, and good thoughtful discussion from you both. There is another relevant aspect, however, to this whole "individual right to own WMDs" argument which clearly illustrates why the argument itself is a red-herring, which is employed solely to deflect the focus away from the essential issue of freedom.
Here on planet Earth, in the real world, the threat from "private" individuals trying to acquire their own personal WMD's is, while theoretically possible, statistically so vanishingly small that in actual practice it is essentially nonexistent. The truth is that the ONLY entities which actually pose a real threat via WMD's are sovereign nation-states, and terrorists who are either directly or indirectly acting as agents of those nation-states.
The reality is that private individuals simply don't have the resources to create and acquire WMD's, and I'm not just talking about money. There's also the scientific resources, including trained personnel and laboratory facilities. Plus, the requisite industrial and manufacturing capabilities, storage and testing and training facilities, and delivery systems. Finally, there's the diplomatic channels and resources so necessary to hiding the development and concealing the movement of such tightly-monitored materials. James Bond villain fantasies aside, even fabulously wealthy individuals such as Bill Gates could not manage all this without at some point utilizing the resources of or connections within governments. As chronicled in "The Black Book of Communism", the biggest murderers and killers of the greatest number of people in the Twentieth Century were sovereign governments. They are the source of any WMD threat - not private individuals.
The bottom line is, again, this whole argument is a fraud, a sham and a deliberate, dishonest distraction. Those who try to use it know full well that private citizens aren't going to try to get WMD's for their personal protection. In the real world, it simply isn't a genuine threat.
Their only purpose for attempting the argument is to try to foreclose and shut-down the debate. They believe that if they can establish some absurdly improbable theoretical point, just "for the sake of argument", as the saying goes, which has no relevance in the real world, then they can use that "point" they have scored to whittle-down their opponents "other arguments" which they cannot counter otherwise.
Thus, to the question "Do you understand the meaning of 'shall not be infringed'?" they reply, "Well, what about WMD's?" Once they're able to coax an admission from their opponent that "maybe WMD's aren't covered" there is no "logical" reason for them to deny the right of government to infringe how many cartridges their magazines can hold, how many and what type of guns they may own, etc., etc. ad nauseum.
The whole argument is nothing but an irrelevant, cheap "logic trap" derived from a ludicrous theoretical improbability. The correct response when someone tries to spring this scam and ask you if private individuals have the right to own nuclear weapons is to reply "Yes, but here on planet Earth IT'S NOT A PROBLEM, NEVER HAS BEEN, AND THERE'S NO EVIDENCE IT'S LIKELY TO EVER BECOME ONE. So why are you trying to talk about THEORETICAL IRRELEVANCIES instead of contributing to the discussion about the PRACTICAL WAYS you, and I, and our fellow citizens can best protect ourselves from the VERY REAL murderers, rapists and other criminals who do threaten us?"
In my opinion, that's just about all the answer that question deserves.
"The difficulty with WMDs is that when used, the operator cannot be sure that innocents are not in harms way, save in rare and remote circumstances."
If the feds attack me in my home and I use a WMD to defend myself, who is responsible for the harm done to innocents? Note that similar logic could be used by a criminal resisting apprehension.