There are and have been illegal for many years. This isn't even an issue.
Another Feinstein and Schumer supporter?
Read Federalist 46.
At the time of the founding, it was legal for individuals to own cannon. Which do you think would be more lethal, an AK-47, or a muzzle-loading cannon filled with grapeshot (basicly turning it into a huge shotgun). The Constitution has explicit provisions for privateers (privately owned warships with rows of cannon)
Do you really think it's a good idea for anyone to be able to buy a machine gun? That would fall into this argument.
The Israelis have every 18-year-old citizen being subject to military service. These reservists keep their full-auto Uzi's, M-16, and Galils with them when they go home. You don't hear of any problems with that happening -- only with Palestinians
The Swiss also have universal military training, and their reservists ALSO keep their weapons at home (with a full combat load of ammo). Again, you don't hear of any problems.
My friend went to Romania a year ago with his wife to visit her family there. He told me you can buy a full-auto AK in the store for about $120. You don't hear of massacres in the streets in Romania
Your middle-class neighbors are not the problem. They can be trusted with firearms. The drug dealers and gang-bangers are the ones committing most of the violence. They will get guns regardless of the laws. Jamaican gang members in England (an island with draconian gun laws) get into shoot outs with machineguns that they somehow smuggle in (probably disguised as a routine cocaine shipment)
In a way, you'd be wrong. They knew that individuals, as well as some towns and townships, owned cannon. Some people owned cannon armed ships, the "ultimate weapon" of the day. Yet they put in no restrictions on what sorts of arms the people could keep or bear. Even a muzzle loading cannon armed with "grape" or "chain" would clear out a crowed much more effectively than any real full auto assault weapon, and a bit quicker too. Reload are sort of slow, but then so were reloads to muskets and especially rifles in those days.
They even put a provison aknowledging private ownership of these weapons into the base Constitution, before the Bill of Rights was added. That provision grants Congress the power to issure "Letters of Marque and Reprisal", which authorize private individuals to "hunt" the ships of particular foreign countries (that the Marque part, the Reprisal part is similar but applies to actions on land). Not much point in giving the Congress power to issue what amounted to "hunting licenses" if no one could own an appropriate weapon, in this case a ship armed with mulitiple heavy cannon.
Yes, why not? They could before 1934, and machine guns had been around about 50 years at that point. The quasi ban on machine guns came about as a result of prohibition and the gangs it created, along with lots of the same time of hype and demonization of inanimate objectes that we see today, even though by then prohibition itself had been repealed. At least with prohibition they modified the Constitution to allow them to institute it, and afterwards that was seen to have been a mistake and the grant of power was repealed via another Constitutional amendment. I call it a quasi ban, because, depending on where one lives, "just anybody" can get a machine gun, even today. Prior to the early 1980s, one could get a brand new from the factory machine gun. Now it's somewhat more difficult and you can't get a truly "new" machine gun. You do have pay a $200 tax and get your local Sherrif or Chief of Police to sign a form stating there is no reason why you shouldn't have a machine gun.
OTOH, when passed that $200 Stamp Tax ammounted almost to an outright ban, since many of the guns themselves, say a Thompson submachine gun or a BAR automatic rifle (a favorite with crooks and G-men alike) could be had for little more than a tenth of that, making the guns inaccesable to all but the rich, corporations and of course crimnials who didn't bother with the tax.