As a veteran, and yet hard-core lefty with an obsession for evidence-based policy, I’m often asked what my position is on gun control; which is to say, in my country (because that subject isn’t as much of an issue in other developed nations—we are the crazy outlier). As it happens there was a recent article on this at The Washington Post that is reasonably honest and accurate about the things we actually could do, and what impact it would have, based on both the science and American legal precedent. This inspired me to lay out what I myself think we should do—which is not the same thing as what I think American voters and politicians would allow us to do. But it is what I think they should do, because it’s what they would do if voters and politicians woke up tomorrow and started acting rationally for a change, and making decisions based on evidence rather than fear or fantasy.

The only barrier to realizing correct policy is the absence of rationality and empiricism in legislatures and the electorate. When it comes to dealing with an irrational public and a disingenuous leadership, the most we can hope for is to reinstitute policies we successfully once already had—like high-capacity magazine and high-powered weapon bans; truly universal background checks; state mental health care funding; red-flagging; and other such bandaids that have a minimal but still measurable impact, and for reasons that should be obvious, e.g. as Fareed Zakaria points out in respect to the “mental health” aspect of the equation:

Do people in the United States have 100 times as many mental health problems as they do in the U.K. [where there are a hundred times fewer gun deaths]? The United States has a rate of gun violence 18 times higher than the average rich country. Does that mean it has 18 times the rate of mental disorders? Texas has almost triple the rate of gun deaths as the state of New York — yet Texas doesn’t have three times as many mentally ill people as New York.

And so on for the rest. The elephant in the room (the readier availability of guns) is the real cause of skyrocketing gun deaths. But we will contemplate those other “solutions” instead, not because they are the best policies, but rather because those are the only policies we have a realistic chance of succeeding at implementing with so irrational a public and such intense gun-lobby bribery of lawmakers. These tried policies are not useless; the science shows they do make things better in some degree, just not in a great degree (see that WaPo article for more; but you can Google-up reliable studies on every point if you employ sound critical methods). And those policies don’t really have any legitimately objectionable downsides (the sky never fell when they were in force, and any prediction of doom did not come to pass). And doing something is always better than doing nothing.

But that isn’t what I’m going to talk about today. I’m going to lay out what a rational American public and honorable American lawmakers would do. And that will differ from other developed nations should or could do (or even have done) only in respect to the limitations posed by our particular national Constitution. Yes, it is conceivable to change that Constitution. Although in all practical respects I think that is at present impossible; even the most widely supported changes to it would never pass these days because our political machine is utterly fucked up. But you’ll see shortly why I don’t think we even need to change it—we could just pay attention to what it already says. In short, I’ll be describing what would pass American Constitutional muster if our Supreme Court justices acted like genuine (and not sham) “originalists.”

My Underlying Principles

I do believe in the citizen soldier. As was policy in ancient Athens, the first approximation of Democracy, I believe every citizen should be capable of taking up arms in defense of their nation—by which I mean, defense against actual invaders of our nation or our allies; not just any foreign military adventures. Or at least some manner of service to that end—there is plenty for the pacifist and even the disabled to do for any fight against a real and tangible enemy in a national or global crisis, from data-processing to staffing medical units. But if you are able to fight, you ought to know how to fight, and be ready to hold any moral front. I believe in national service. And this at the very least involves access to firearms to train and to familiarize yourself with how to employ, handle, and even thwart them.

I also believe there is such a thing as legitimate hunters—not beer-swilling fun-killers and glory-hounding trophyists, but people who actually hunt to feed their family, or to help cull exploding populations (since we have wiped out natural predators and thus imbalanced ecosystems, we are the ones who often have to step in to fill their ecological role), or to keep in practice at doing either; or all the above. And guns, let’s be honest, are a more humane way to kill than bows, spears, or crossbows. I also believe in self-defense, certainly of the home; and firearms can play an important role in that respect. Though a certified marksman in pistols and rifles, I keep a shortsword for this purpose, in which I am also trained; thieves don’t want it, it moves quickly around corners, and it won’t miss or fly clean through a target to kill a sleeping kid in a nearby home. But guns serve as well. Some people for this purpose (though not just everyone all willy-nilly) even have legitimate reasons to carry firearms in public, at least openly if not concealed. Guns also serve obviously necessary roles in security professions and police forces.

But I also believe in rational, evidence-based policy-making (as you’ll see across all my articles on politics). I reject ideology-based policy, and consequently don’t usually land in exactly the same place as any typical “side” in a given polital debate. Correct policy can only follow from true facts. And citizen soldiery does not require owning the weapons you train on or keeping them in the home; and neither hunting nor self-defense require semi-automatic weapons or high-capacity magazines. And the fantasy that guns are needed as a check against tyranny is stone-cold bullshit. Your fancy arsenal of bump-stocked assault rifles will vaporize under their missiles, rockets, grenades, cluster-bombs, artillery barages, belt-fed 50s and depleted-uranium chaingun straffes. Their tanks and gunships alone will finish you. They’ll roll over you like a squad of Ukrainian partisans over a Russian batallion. They will always outnumber and outgun you by several orders of magnitude. You cannot really fight the Feds—once they’ve decided to kill you, you are dead. The only defense against tyranny is to vote.

That’s fact. Not opinion. And policy must follow fact. So the “we need machineguns to fight a runaway government” argument in the gun control debate is a non-starter. If that’s where you are, you are arguing from fantasy, not fact. I only argue from fact. And as you’ll soon see, that argument isn’t even constututional. There was never any original intent for the second amendment to establish private gun ownership. And the Second Amendment was never meant as a bulwark against tyranny, but in fact against insurrection itself. The Founding Fathers had a completely different idea in mind as to how its implemetation would check federal power.

Outline of My Policy Recommendation

Quite simply, we should treat guns like cars. Not only should every gun and its rifling signature, serial number, and ownership history be registered with the state (not the federal government; state government—for the same constitutional reasons I’ll conclude with below—although the federal government could provide an interstate cross-search capability, it would not be creating or maintaining the databases themselves), and indeed whether manufactured here or imported this must be a fundamental requirement of clearing customs or going to market (facts that can be federally enforced); but also, no one should be allowed to own, purchase, or rent any firearm, or any components particular to the manufacturing of a firearm, or any ammunition or components of ammunition, without a gun operator’s license from the state (and again, I mean state; not the federal government; if a federal system exists at all, it would service only persons living or working on exclusively federal lands or protectorates, or aggregate state databases).

Like a driver’s license, a gun license would require passing written and practical tests in safety and handling (covering everything from home safety, e.g. the prevention of children’s accessing an operational firearm, to public safety, e.g. never firing on a target you have not positively identified as a threat, never pointing the weapon at anyone until you intend to use it, taking “collateral damage risk” responsibly into account before firing into a crowd, and so on). Which would happen as a matter of course for all persons in national or other service (e.g. all soldiers, police, and security personnel will automatically receive this training and licensing). And it would have an easily-scanned ID code (like a magstrip or QR or bar code; and as a backup, a legible ID number) that would immediately check its status against the appropriate state database: if the license has been revoked or suspended (for reasons of criminal conviction, mental incompetence, red-flag, or anything the like), anyone selling firearms, components, and ammo will know this before completing any sale—and they will by law be forbidden to sell to anyone without a valid license.

No one in fact will be allowed to rent or sell any of this equipment without running such a check: gun shows, no exception; private sales and transfers and gifts, no exception. This means gun license ID numbers and their corresponding status will be fully public, searchable by anyone via state-run internet database—including access to the photo and physical description of the license holder; but not including unnecessary confidential information like their home address (although that information shall be available to certain authorized users, such as the police).

Gun owners will be legally liable for the misuse and abuse of weapons they own. Failing to report a theft, for example, will not shield them (although a weapon reported stolen will; unless your report is fraudulent, which will also itself be a crime). If a family member (or anyone) harms someone or damages property with your weapon, for example, you will face at least misdemeanor criminal charges for neglect of duty or facilitation. And you will be subject to all applicable lawsuits. Owning a weapon is a real responsibility, and thus you will have to weigh whether you want to assume that responsibility before choosing to own one.

No weapon will be legal for private ownership that loads more than six rounds or has any form of semi-automatic or automatic function (nor will any weapons be legal that are designed to easily be converted to such function). That means pump-action shotguns, revolvers, and bolt-action rifles will be the best you can get. Because nothing else is necessary for private owners. You will also only be able to buy one weapon per month (no mass sales or bulk buys), with exceptions rare and only allowed when directly notified to the state within a reasonable time frame (e.g. taking possession of a weapons cache by inheritance). The state will already be notified of every legal purchase you make and thus will always know who is hoarding weapons or making suspicious buys; just as we already do for the purchase of explosives or the essential components of explosives.

Weapons of war (e.g. fifty-caliber long guns, submachineguns, assault weapons) may, at each state’s legislative discression, be available for rental, or purchase and ownership, but not in the home. Such weapons must, by law, always remain stored in a heavily-secure state-run armory with its own internal firing range, where you can go for testing and practice with your weapons in this category. And these will be designed so you can’t “go rogue” with a weapon to shoot your way out with it; you’ll with certainty, by design, be taken out or trapped before that ever happens. But when the governor of that state, or the mayor or equivalent elected authority over a municipality, declares a public emergency, they may issue a directive to allow validly-licensed persons to remove their weapons from these armories for legal temporary use in the community, but they must be returned when the emergency concludes, and must be confirmed returned (or otherwise confirmed destroyed—or lost, in which case triggering an investigation to confirm it was lost, and lost in good faith, meaning, without criminal neglect or intent). And even this armory law will be optional. No state will be required to implement any part of it. Owning weapons of war will only ever be a state-awarded privilege, subject to state regulation; not a right.

There will not, however, be age restrictions on firearms. Children will be allowed to handle and use them with responsible supervision. And any adult citizen will be subject to the same laws regarding access to and ownership of guns. Because I disagree with all age-restrictive laws for adults. I believe they violate the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment (ensuring no citizen shall be denied “the equal protection of the laws”), as well as the moral valence of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964-1967. The latter does not establish any blanket legal prohibition against age discrimination, but the moral principles it implements establish it in concept: it is as wrong to treat a woman differently based on the “average” properties of women (e.g. “women are short; therefore no woman can serve in a job that requires one to be tall”) as it is to treat an eighteen-year-old differently based on the “average” poperties of teenagers (e.g. “teenagers are impulsive and can’t be trusted with responsibility; therefore no teenager can be entrusted with a responsibility like renting a car or drinking or vaping pot”). Individuals must be treated as individuals. Therefore no adult age discrimination should ever be codified in law. And consequently there should not be any age restriction on owning guns (nor on drinking or renting cars or vaping pot either) for any voting adult who remains compos mentis.

There should, however, be a buyback program in effect: federal or state governments should maintain a fund for purchasing any and all firearms proferred them (albeit at below market price; or in the case of “homemade” weapons, below cost), no questions asked. This will gradually reduce the flood and glut of firearms in circulation and increase the rate at which even stolen firearms end up off the street, increasingly impairing criminal access to firearms, and reducing even home firearm accident rates.

Also, of course, as I’ve already mentioned, states should implement, and streamline and advertise, every valid form of incompetence-based restriction on access to firearms (from criminal convictions to red-flagging). But they should not bother with sentencing enhancements for gun-related crime to de-incentivize criminals carrying and using guns. Because the science shows those have no significant effect (Hilke 2020; cf. even the U.S. Department of Justice 2016). Rather, as Source New Mexico aptly puts it, would-be criminals “need access to quality health care, mental health care, substance recovery programs, housing and other supports.” Reducing crime is most effectively accomplished by reducing the root causes of criminality. The evidence shows, particularly comparing nations, that an effective amount of socialism that achieves this outcome, programs averting the manufacture of criminals in the first place, are always more effective at reducing crime than harsher policing and sentencing. Indeed, even just ending the drug war would have a substantial crime-reductive impact (it would also, incidentally, reduce refugee pressures on our southern border, as that is substantially caused by drug cartels, which are substantially funded into destructive existence by our drug war). As would, I suspect, instituting a universal basic income.

Evidential Defense of My Policy Recommendation

The first evidential basis for my policy proposal is that once implemented it would begin to change the entire gun culture of America, which is the real problem underlying our extraordinary propensity for gun violence compared to all other developed nations. Once our laws establish an outsize respect for the responsibilities of gun ownership, and acknowledge that they are a superlatively dangerous instrument, people’s currently lax and reckless attitudes toward gun use and ownership will decline, and begin to shift toward the gun cultures of other nations—which we know we can expect, because it has already happened everywhere else. Which will have a mass effect on reducing the abuse of, and excessive recklessness of access, to firearms.

The second evidential basis for my policy proposal is that it will reduce gun accidents and crimes owing to the simple burden effect: only people willing to put in the effort to get properly licensed, and remain so, will have legal access to guns and ammunition; and all legal owners will have received substantial training and passed handling tests. This will begin to reduce gun availability and increase the rate of responsible gun-ownership (and thus responsible access and handling of guns). Gun registration, meanwhile, will increase the rate at which criminals are apprehended (because the history of a gun can then be investigated, and thus illegal markets more frequently exposed and dismantled, and thieves and perpetrators more frequently caught). My policies will not, of course, eliminate irresponsible gun ownership and handling. But it will without doubt change the ratio: more and more gun owners and handlers will be both responsible and competent than the present system foments; and more criminals and illegal markets we be caught. A net positive outcome effect on gun crimes and accidents owing to this will be measurable.

Data confirming these facts is presented in the Washington Post article I mentioned at the top. For example, its sixth proposal (to treat guns like cars) includes data showing that states that required licensing saw substantial drops in gun-related homicides and suicides. Even its second proposal, to age-restrict guns, its only proposal that I reject, illustrates by proxy the general points I just made: all evidence of the impact of age restriction will track as well the impact of responsibility-and-competence restriction. Change peoples attitudes about weapons—by making it harder to get them and requiring training to get them, by requiring people to take seriously the steps and effort involved—and you will change the ratio of irresponsible and incompetent people who have them. Which is the actual metric “age restriction” is supposed to get at, albeit by the unjust instrument of prejudicially assuming all persons of a given group are irresponsible, rather than requiring them as individuals to provide some demonstration that they are responsible (and likewise adding controls like red flag laws that facilitate the same thing).

One might at this point object that putting so many restrictions on guns will leave it harder for law-abiding citizens to get them while criminals will continue to arm-up as easily as ever. But there is no evidence to back this claim. All restrictions on legal ownership of guns trickle down into a corresponding reduction in criminal access to guns. Because guns start to get rarer and harder to find; they get more expensive on the black market; and are confiscated at a much higher frequency by law endorcement. Moreover, unlike law-abiding gun-owners, criminal gun owners (and criminal gun sellers) get caught and prosecuted at a substantially higher rate than regulations ever block competent and responsible citizens from accessing guns. In short, while anyone qualified can jump the hoops to get a gun; it is not the case that “anyone” can illegally access or sell guns and never get pinched for it. They aren’t all getting pinched, sure. But substantial numbers will be. The net effect is a reduction in criminals with guns, at a faster rate than any reduction in law-abiding citizens’ access to guns.

More importantly, relative access to guns doesn’t even matter. If your outcome metric is (as it should only be) meaningfully reducing gun-related deaths and crimes, greater regulation and restriction simply always has a substantial positive effect (see the May 2022 editorial survey of studies at Scientific American). So there is no reason to care about criminals having easier access to guns than everyone else, if that being so does not even increase gun-related crime. The intuitive worry that “a criminal will use a gun on me, so I can’t let the government disarm me” is not rational when in fact it wasn’t the government that disarmed you. Because a licensing law in no way prevents your having a gun—unless you legitimately should not have one; and then it’s your incompetence, not the government, that’s disarming you. It’s even less rational when the statistics show that the scenario you are worried about will actually become less frequent, not more so. Intuition is unreliable. Evidence is king. And fact is, the evidence shows gun licensing and restrictions do not increase your chances of being victimized by an armed criminal—they actually decrease those chances. As they do also the chances of accidental injury and death. And that’s why such regulations should be implemented.

As with any fraught political debate, there will be a lot of competing “claims” made by special interests on both sides. Your job as a citizen is to critically examine which of those actually are true, or even supported by evidence at all, and which not. To this end I will list some competing resources you can “burn test” for reliability and accuracy (as opposed to bullshit, rhetoric, and mythology):

• Against gun control, see the NRA-ILA’s “Why Gun Control Doesn’t Work” and the CRPA’s “Ten Arguments Against Gun Control.” In favor of gun control, see Dr. Ryan Hubbard’s “On Gun Control: 7 Pro-Gun Arguments and Why They Fail,” and Daniel Brezenoff’s “Arguments Against Gun Control and Facts That Prove Them Wrong.” For an optimized Pro-Con spreadsheet on gun control, see ProCon.org. But some of the best collections of scientific and expert conclusions come from the pro-control side: see Everytown, the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, and the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, as leading examples.

If you explore these, you’ll find the gun lobby is by far more avoidant of actual facts and more dependent on mythology, dogma, and emotions trumping reason. They will cite Supreme Court justices echoing their dogmas in violation of the actual wording of the Constitution, rather than studying the actual original wording and intent of the Constitution. They will continue citing John Lott over and over again, despite his work being antiquated and thoroughly refuted, indeed even established to be fraudulent (see, and fact-check to verify if you don’t trust any of it, “The Bogus Claims of the NRA’s Favorite Social Scientist, Debunked” at Vox; “The GOP’s Favorite Gun ‘Academic’ Is a Fraud” at ThinkProgress; “John Lott’s Missing Survey on Defensive Gun Use” at GVPedia, along with its corresponding whitesheet; and “Discredited Pro-Gun Researcher John Lott Falls Apart When You Press Him” at MediaMatters). They will keep citing “Chicago,” rather than comprehensive studies comparing all cities and states and nations—a dead giveaway for a cherry-picking fallacy rather than seeing what results when you apply valid scientific methods instead (on why the example of Chicago can’t help the gun lobby, see Philip Bump at the Washington Post and Danielle Kurtzleben at NPR). In the final analysis, all factual truth and overall scientific findings support my policy improvements.

When we get passed the bullshit and to actual provable facts, there is no factual argument against my policy to speak of (legal arguments I’ll get to next). Because there are no negative effects worth concern. All defensible reasons for access to firearms are protected and guns are made available to those earning the privilege of it. And not only is there a minimal restriction of liberty in this, it actually represents a net gain in liberty: because the reduction in the loss of liberty of those impacted by gun crimes and accidents far outweighs the loss of liberty of individuals required to act responsibilty to earn the privileges of gun ownership. And there are multiple substantial positive effects. No policy will “eliminate all crime,” so that is not a relevant outcome criterion. Any gain is gain. All that matters is what the positive outcomes of the policy cost (financially and in terms of other burdens, including restrictions on liberty), whether that cost is worth spending for the effect (e.g. is there no net loss or even a net gain, e.g. in reduced total societal financial costs of having vs. lacking the policy; likewise in respect to overall societal liberty), and whether the effect (the outcomes being lauded) is a desirable public goal. Which in this case it clearly is.

Constitutional Defense of My Policy Recommendation

That leaves the legal argument. In the United States, our laws at present must accord with the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” In a genuinely originalist interpretation, we would heed the actual wording of this text as originally intended by its actual authors, and thus must reference what its content meant to them at the time, meaning the actual context not only of its composition but its implementation by those very same people. After all, the first four Presidents of the United States were the very Founding Fathers who negotiated and approved this amendment’s text: George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. How they regarded the Second Amendment is thus kind of fundamental to what they thought they were agreeing to when they established it.

Note two key phrases in the amendment: “well regulated militia” and “the people.” The amendment does not mention any individual right. It states a right bestowed upon the people, as a collective. And it establishes at the very forefront the importance, in fact the literal necessity, of any thus-armed militia being “well regulated.” It does not say “randos with unregulated access guns are necessary to a free state.” It says exactly the opposite: “well-regulated militias are necessary to a free state.” And indeed not just regulated, but well regulated. And militias. Not individuals. It does not matter what disingenuous dogmatists on the Supreme Court bench have “claimed” any of this means or entails. Fact is fact. And fact is, these are the original intentions of the amendment, its indisputable meaning as written. Any alternative “reading” is simply lying. And a Supreme Court that actually honestly applied an originalist interpretation to this amendment would agree.

Thus, the Second Amendment explicitly authorizes, in fact even requires, gun regulation. The same power and indeed obligation that Congress and the States exercise in regulating access to other weapons of war (explosives, missiles, artillery, machineguns, nuclear bombs, even just fissile material; the arming of vehicles—air, land, or sea; even just unregulated militias—private armies—are already illegal) actually fully applies to all weapons whatever. The Second Amendment explicitly says so. So there is no genuine Constitutional argument for unregulated access to firearms, any more than to swords or even brass kuckles (you can check: even these are to some extent regulated across most of the United States; and firearms are obviously a far sight more deadly).

In the 18th century, a “well regulated militia” meant a body of conscripts or volunteers subject to the will of the electorate—the will of the people. In other words, you don’t get to be in a militia (and thus armed) without the democratic vote of the community you are in. What the Second Amendment actually did, and intended to do, was to prevent the Federal government from disarming states and municipalities. It did not intend to make access to weapons immune to democracy. And in this effect we have already satisfied the Second Amendment’s intent with the implementation of state National Guards. The Feds can’t prevent California, for example, maintaining its own well-regulated army; and so it does: the California National Guard. Likewise, each state can authorize its munipalities to arm their own “well regulated militias” (like, say, the Los Angeles Police Department; SWAT teams; and the like). The states can in fact have any other armed militias they want—for example, the California State Police. The people, as a collective, can thus democratically elect officials and legislators whereby to institute the formation of well regulated militias. The Federal Government can’t infringe upon the people’s right to do that. Those are the guns the Federal government is prohibited from taking away. But armed citizens are still always subject to the will of the local electorate—they are not immune to the people’s will. Who gets armed, for what, and when, and under what conditions, are all the right of the people to decide, at the State and (with State approval) local level. That’s what well-regulated means.

Which is also why gun regulations have to be predominately state-level—so long as well-regulated militias are in question. The Federal government can enforce the Second Amendment’s requirement of “well regulated militias” and thus can require States to meet certain minimal standards for the regulation of arms. It can also, per the Commerce Clause, regulate the interstate transport of weapons. So, for example, in principle the Feds could constitutionally prosecute a criminal in Chicago using a gun smuggled in from Texas for violating an interstate commerce law; and likewise investigate the chain of custody of that gun, and prosecute everyone involved in its transport across state borders. But most actual regulatory law is going to be at the State level, if we adhere to the original intent of the Second Amendment. This is why gun registration and licensing, like car and driver’s licensing, must be a state-level regime. The Federal government can require manufacturers and importers to follow safety and registrability requirements, because of its centrality to interstate commerce; but actual registers of guns owned and transferred should be maintained by the states. And the Federal government can establish standards as recommendations to the States. But State legislatures and elected officials—hence the people—ultimately get to decide what’s legal and what’s not.

As the framer of the Constitution James Madison himself wrote:

To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, countries or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws.

John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States, 475 (1787-1788)

And this is exactly how it all used to be. Early state constitutions were even clearer on this point, some more and others less restrictive or permissive as to individuals bearing arms, and yet in the U.S. Constitution, more permissive versions of the second amendment were rejected. So the federal constitution must be read in this context, as this was the context everyone understood the text of its amendment to have been written in at the time. Everyone then understood that only well-regulated militias subject to the will of the people are protected by it from Federal infringement—not from State-by-State regulation (see Beth Daley’s “Five Types of Gun Laws the Founding Fathers Loved” and Carol Highsmith’s “American Gun Culture Is Based on Frontier Mythology—But Ignores How Common Gun Restrictions Were in the Old West” at The Conversation; and Robert Spitzer, “Gun Law History in the United States and Second Amendment Rights,” Law & Contemporary Problems 80.2 (2017)).

For example, federal bans on fully-automatic machineguns fully satisfy the Second Amendment: because they do not infringe on the right of the people’s well-regulated militias to have them (the National Guard, SWAT teams, police can have them, as can others who get proper licensing—the States, by will of the people, retain this right); but rather, they ensure only well-regulated militias can have them, because they are dangerous. This is enforcing the Second Amendment, not breaching it. The difference between a machinegun and a semi-automatic assault rifle or even pistol does not exist in the Second Amendment. If dangerous weapons can be regulated, all dangerous weapons can be regulated. So there is no legal argument that semi-automatics can’t be banned if fully-automatics can. The legal basis for the one fully applies to the other. It’s merely a matter of the people’s democratic choice where to draw that line. The Second Amendment simply does not stand in their way.

To get up to speed on the actual original context and intent of the second amendment, which I am simply reiterating, see Paul Finkelman, “A Well Regulated Militia: The Second Amendment in Historical Perspective,” Chicago-Kent Law Review 76.1 (October 2000) and Dru Stevenson’s survey in “Revisiting the Original Congressional Debates About the Second Amendment.” This is essentially verified by Congressional Summary and much of the history summarized at Wikipedia. In actual fact, when the Second Amendment was ratified, few citizens could even afford to own guns, much less did (see Thomas Verenna, “A Want of Arms in Pennsylvania,” Journal of the American Revolution (April 2014)). Public armories were a necessity. Whereas unauthorized “militias” were frequently forcibly disarmed by the very Presidents who ratified or composed the Bill of Rights; and this was deemed fully in accord with the text and intent of the second amendment (see Thomas Verenna, “Misinformed: How Divisive Politics Are Reshaping American History for the Worse,” American History & Ancestry, 28 August 2013). Which further destroys the claim that the Second Amendment was intended to ensure people could fight the Federal government. All the Founders saw it exactly the other way around.

The bottom line is that nothing in my policy recommendation violates the original wording or intent of the Second Amendment. In fact it is explicitly authorized by it. And this conclusion would survive every other constitutional interpretive framework as well. Which leaves only the consideration of whether it is worth doing—is it excessive regulation, or socially beneficial regulation? And that question has already been answered. There is no rational or evidence-based objection left. It is only irrationality (and money-grubbing knavery) that stands in its way.