As a supporter of the second amendment, I see no issues with a full-auto ban. Even though, technically, you can obtain a fully automatic weapon if you so wish. There are just a good deal of hoops you have to jump through to do so.

The reason I have no issue with this is because the government also has a duty to protect the common good. If it is determined by elected officials that specific weapons are far too dangerous to a large enough group of citizenry, then there's no problem with limiting its availability. It is a difficult balancing act. The government may make it difficult to obtain permission but they cannot outright make it impossible. Which is the basis of many lawsuits against gun control laws.

Also, I suppose it depends on how you interpret "arms". I define it to include weaponry we today call small arms, which range from pistols to rifles to machine guns. Which are available with an increasing level, based on lethality, of vetting before you can legally obtain said weapon. Any weapon beyond that list most likely just does not apply.

This is why I think the nuclear weapon example used by gun control people is just outright silly.

There is a simple fix: the government cannot possess any weapon that it denies to individuals.

If you cannot own a fully-automatic firearm, the Army cannot own any. If you cannot own an air-to-air missile, the Air Force cannot own any. If you cannot own a nuclear missile sub, the Navy can't have any.

This would eliminate outright bans, although regulatory restrictions that tend to favor people supported by military infrastructure would likely replace them. Perhaps you would be permitted to own and use fully-automatic rifles, but you would also be required to regularly train, register, and qualify in their use, such that it would be a surmountable and nondiscriminatory barrier to ownership, albeit one more easily passed by military employees in the regular course of their duties.

There is no particular barrier currently imposed by the second amendment with respect to requiring that those who do keep and bear arms be proficient in their use. It may even be supported by the "well-regulated militia" clause. You may bear arms, but if you do, you must also be able to use them proficiently.

As I interpret it, the 2nd amendment allows me to own and carry any weapon of military significance, without regard to the threat it may pose to myself and my neighbors, from a simple, throwable rock to my own multi-warhead ICBM with tunable, independently-targeted payloads. It is incredibly obvious that latter possibility is not very compatible with modern civilization.

If anyone is going to have private weapons of mass destruction, I would certainly want some limitation on their use, like the "odd man" failsafe-override procedure in Andromeda Strain, where those people with ultimate control over that weapon can satisfy some simple, objective criteria that ensure its use is rational, ethical, and viewpoint-agnostic. This should allow an equal possibility for using something in an armed rebellion, or for the government to use it to suppress one.

The government nuclear infrastructure already has safeguards against improper use of arms. Psychological screening, inventory controls, and authorization procedures, to name a few. If private individuals or organizations were required to implement substantially similar safeguards, no one would bother owning any, because the weapons are simply too expensive to maintain, for something that you are never likely to be able to use and still remain the good guy.

If you think of the government as just a lot of regular people doing their jobs, allowing regular people to have military-grade weapons as an expensive hobby is no more threatening. A Wyoming ranch owner with a nuclear missile is not more threatening than a Wyoming silo-bunker lieutenant with a nuclear missile, if they both have to get approval from someone presumed rational before they blow anything up. The latter has his military chain of command. Perhaps the former has to call up the county sheriff for his launch codes. Donning the uniform does not somehow make a person more qualified to handle a weapon. So if something is too dangerous for an individual, it is certainly too dangerous for an individual with a specific employer with an organizational structure geared around dilution of individual responsibility.

I would agree with the training part, I would have no issue at having training be a requirement.

The rest I have to disagree on simply because I don't view nuclear weapons, and other primarily military-based weapons (air-to-air missiles being one), as "arms". Like I said, it all matters on how you define that particular term. Obviously you have your definition and I have mine. Thus, the eternal debate.

Your attitude allows existing rights to be eroded, circumscribed, or eliminated entirely by manipulating the colloquially accepted definitions of dictionary words.

An arm is a weapon. The right to bear arms is the right to carry weapons.

If you would like to redefine "arms" to exclude certain types of weaponry, surely you have no problems redefining "speech" to include making cash payments to political campaigns and to exclude publishing written content to the Internet? Or perhaps you would like to redefine "unreasonable search and seizure" to exclude the collection, retention, and analysis of all packet headers and unencrypted content transmitted across the public networks? Or maybe a "speedy and public trial" will take place in secret, using secret evidence, without the assistance of counsel, by the military, at Guantanamo Bay.

Consider that you may be part of the problem.

The existence of nuclear, chemical, biological, electromagnetic, and radioactivity weapons demand that the amendment guaranteeing the right to bear arms be amended, not reinterpreted or ignored. They are, unequivocally, arms. And those arms are arguably too dangerous for any single individual to own or control without restriction. Saying they are not "arms" is simply a lie for political expediency, and undermines the rule of law and the constitutional system of government.

Our collective unwillingness to revise old laws to make them more applicable to current conditions has led to patches and workarounds of dubious worth, and to some people equating fully automatic rifles with nuclear bombs. The "ongoing debate" generates ambiguity, which is exploited by political parasites to our detriment. We cannot afford to endlessly argue. It can be settled conclusively, to be reconsidered later, whenever progress demands it.

All we need to agree upon is exactly what sorts of arms are too dangerous for a randomly selected individual to possess, and apply that standard equally to all people, including those with badges or rank insignia.

I'm late getting back to this but I laugh at your so-called ability to determine my attitude and opinion about anything based on a few sentences you read on a web page. You do not know me, you do not speak for me, and you surely do not have the ability to tell me what I think about any particular subject.

I can easily extend your definition of arms to mean anything and everything, which in the end makes it mean nothing.

I believe you protest too much.