And for what it's worth, if you can make an intensional definition for "weapons of mass murder" that includes the most dangerous weapons for mass-murder purposes without unnecessarily curtailing the design space for the socially acceptable uses for weapons, please go for it.
Is this too much to ask? "Not killing people", is this a liberal snowflake's wet dream?
"Not killing people"? Think about it.
No it isn't. Homes in the U.S. are primarily built of wood, rifles can and will produce a tremendous amount of over penetration in such "self defense" scenarios.
The idea of some idiot who cannot comprehend ballistics in an emotional panic lacing up my neighborhood with a 30rd mag fed rifle is terrifying. Take some self defense courses please.
For the US even something like limited internal magazines isn't politically tenable (a 5 shot internal magazine and manual action would still be useful for hunting but could not be used to shoot hundreds of rounds per minute into a crowd of people).
Hell, I won't be real shocked if nothing gets done about bump stocks (which don't really have any purpose beyond shooting for fun).
In the USA. There seems to be some correlation between that and the number of mass shootings in a country, so, maybe, that has to change if one wants to decrease the number of mass shootings.
Good question. I can’t imagine any legal use for a high capacity semiautomatic weapon with armor piercing bullets. A weapon like that is comically impractical for hunting or self defense.
Law abiding citizens should be able to get by with handguns, shotguns, and hunting rifles. Clips with more than a dozen rounds should be banned, as should particularly deadly types af ammunition.
Either that or we could go back to doing it the way the framers of the constitution intended; make everything illegal except for muskets.
Me with an AR-15 versus the Marines is not going to end well for me.
> I can’t imagine any legal use for a high capacity semiautomatic weapon with armor piercing bullets. A weapon like that is comically impractical for hunting or self defense.
I was pointing out that the point wasn't hunting, or even self defense. It was to form an effective fighting force, and semiautomatic (and even fully automatic) weapons and armor piercing bullets are very useful for that.
You replied, questioning whether such things could be effective today. That's a different question. It's a valid question, but it's a different question from the intent of the Second Amendment (and of what should therefore be legal).
And by the way, the militias, by themselves, were not enough to win the Revolutionary War...
Note that the other side of the popular militia resting in the states protected by the 2nd Amendment is that that was supposed to be the foundation of national defense as well, not a large standing army. (Some standing army as a cadre and rapid reaction force was viewed as necessary, and the absence of one a failing of the pre-Constitutional system.)
For example, the amendment could say that "militia" means the National Guard, and that is in fact supposed to be a significant fighting force, with military-grade weapons and people trained and ready to use them. And for personal use, people can have weapons sufficient for self-defense but not for mass murder.
But for that to happen, we've got to persuade 3/4 of the state that that's the correct answer. That's a pretty tall hill to climb...
If your law abiding neighbor is building bombs in his garage, is that a problem?
Taking your garbage edit of the parent comment and setting it totally aside:
Legal firearms routinely become illegal, most often when they are stolen by people who are already criminals. Unlocked cars are a great source of 'legal' pistols as it turns out.
The problem of small arms proliferation is real and it is one of the reasons U.S. and other modern nations regulate them so much.