The long and the short of it is whether we will continue to tolerate a too intrusive government, from any level, in our daily lives.
The answer, I fear, is yes. And we will rue the day.
There is no ambiguity in the Second Amendment. It is plain, succinct, and logical. Restrictions on felons and mentally incompetent persons, may be within the constraints of reasonable, but there is no provision for ‘reasonsble’ constraints in the text. Does that open a can of worms for many folks? Probably.
The argument often used is that common sense restrictions on the Second Amendment are not unlike the “yelling fire in a crowded theater” argument applied to the First Amendment. I’m not sure I fully agree with that notion, at this point, but I’m open to further discussion.
However, the restriction on machine guns is, IMO, unconstitutional, despite being upheld over the years since it’s creation in the late 1930’s.
There’s an argument elsewhere in this thread that alludes to nuclear weapons. Explosive devices are not generally considered to be firearms, which is the subject of this action.
The problem with using the analogy of falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater to banning possesion of arms is that the person still has his means to shout fire, i.e., his vocal chords. Banning the implements of self defense would be the same as removing our vocal chords so we can’t shout fire and thereby cause injury.
“There’s an argument elsewhere in this thread that alludes to nuclear weapons. Explosive devices are not generally considered to be firearms, which is the subject of this action.”
The power of a nuclear weapons can’t be controlled by an ordinary citizen and would threaten the lives of others, therefore, the banning of nuclear weapons is within the constitution since the rights of others are threatened. The same argument can be made regarding biological weapons ownership. A Firearm on the other hand can be controlled by it’s owner and is not indiscriminate in nature, therefore firearm ownership falls under the protection of the second amendment.
That being said, from a technical standpoint a nuclear weapon is an “arm” as defined by the 2nd amendment.
It's only been upheld in the lower courts, the Supreme Court has never ruled on it, not in a Second Amendment context at least. Of course a few lower federal courts have overturned it, especially after the 1986 total ban, which removed the "taxation" fig leaf.