And no one in their right mind is suggesting .50 cal machine guns mounted on trucks is a wise idea. However, I don't have a problem with someone owning one for use in protection of their property. But to suggest that certain firearms are WMDs is going a bit far don't you think? The same argument could be held every time technology changed in the past 200 years. However, the difference now is that the Republic is no longer in existence as the Founders knew it. The morality, at any level, is not there. The government is more in the business of keeping the masses doped up (not literally), satisfied, and under control instead of staying out of the way. It's taking on the role more of a warden than as a protector. For this nation to return to a Constitutional Republic, yes the government needs to return to a much smaller level. That includes not sticking its nose into state level issues, not enforcing laws that maintain who I can and can not work with in the private sector, and kicking in the doors to some poor schmoes house because they 'think' he or she may be doing some the folks in Washington don't approve of.
However there's a converse to that as well. The people need to be educated to what role the government is supposed to hold in a Constitutional Republic, especially under our Constitution, and the part that the morality that so long ago left us holds as well. That means allowing the respective states to have morality clauses, as they did at the time of the signing of the Constitution. Considering that people like Frumfrum are going to call those actions racist, hateful, and every name under the sun, I really don't see which way there is.
The government will gain more power and the Republican party (the old Democrat/Anti-Federalist party) will continue to move further left until one can't tell a difference between the two parties. A third or fourth party is going to have to come to the forefront. While I don't necessarily agree with all the aspects of the Libertarian party, I consider myself more of a Constitutionalist (and the spirit under which it was written) moreso than anything