It is hard to square the existence of the 2A's militia clause with claims that the 2A does not apply to "military style" small arms. Why should we seek to define (limit?) the type of people having gun access rights by using the 2A militia clause yet not apply that "militia intent" to the type (class?) of arms to be protected?
RE: The first sentence.
When you use the word "apply", are you suggesting that the militia clause suggests that citizens should be able to possess these "military style" small arms?
I really do think that original intent still runs up against a wall here. Factually speaking, at the time of the founding a citizen really could possess anything the military did. So, a well-armed militia could integrate with/function as an official army. But, that's outdated. Weaponry was extremely limited as compared to today, and while I cannot be sure, I'd bet the founders would say it differently if they knew what was coming.
It sounds like you recognize that there still has to be some kind of limit on that in light of modern technology, since you are referring to "military style small arms", which is obviously only a subset of the total armaments available to our military. My original point regarding the framers intent was in line with that: if we're going to have a sane government policy, then no matter
what was intended when the 2nd was drafted, we need to make sure that certain weapons cannot be privately owned. The most obvious and lowest hanging fruit there is fusion devices.
So to the extent you are relying on the militia clause, it sounds to me like you're still in agreement that there must be a line somewhere in there. The question then becomes "ok. But where?" You say "military-style small arms". Now, I'm no gun expert so I'm not sure exactly what you're thinking of. Does this include fully automatic weapons like an M-16, rather than the semi-automatic AR-15? Basically, do you mean guns a person can carry, but not something like, say, a howitzer?
Anyway, my answer would be to generally ignore the militia clause and instead focus on what Heller did: a finding that the core of the 2nd Amd right to bear arms is
self-defense. Use that to determine what should and should not be available to the citizenry.
My posts on gun control become tl;dr easily because this is complicated. The above would apply to an ideal world. In the actual world, tons of people already own semi-automatic rifles like AR-15's. I don't see how they're so great for self-defense. They're cumbersome. In public, wouldn't someone best be served by a handgun or two? And at home, wouldn't someone be served best by a couple loaded shotguns - that way they don't have to worry so much about aiming properly when they're trying to stop the robber/murderer?
So in an ideal world, those probably wouldn't be sold. But because they already have been, we're more or less stuck with them. So in the real world, I would at the very least maintain any existing laws on banning
fully automatic weapons from being sold to the public. Those have little self-defense function unless you're trying to pin someone down while other people on your team move around, from what I gather. Hence, that's pretty much the only circumstance the military uses them on full-auto. Otherwise, if they're trying to kill someone, they set rifles to semi-auto. You just can't aim on full-auto, from what I gather.
This topic is emotional for both sides, but it shouldn't be made personal to each other.
