I have a few nitpicks about your examples though:
Copyright and patent laws might be different if they had to be renewed. I suspect there's a good chance they'd be worse based on the sort of laws that have been passed on the subject recently.
There have been credible movements in several states to rethink the war on drugs. They usually don't get the results you might want though. As an example, after Alaska's supreme court struck down the state's ban on marijuana, the voters put a new one in place (which was also struck down).
Small arms are very useful in modern combat, especially in a rebellion where it isn't desirable for the government to level an entire city. Asymmetric warfare works, and small arms are helpful for capturing more powerful equipment.