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I don't think @quiet_NaN is saying that widespread gun ownership or widespread concealed carry of handguns is incompatible with a modern society - he is saying that the text of the 2nd amendment doesn't distinguish between "citizen grade weapons" like AR15s and "military grade weapons" like F35s, VX gas grenades, and nukes, and therefore taking it literally and seriously would allow nuclear-armed Branch Davidians and suchlike, and that that is not compatible with a modern society. I agree - I think that a government that is actually meaningfully restricted in its actions by fear of small groups of armed citizens is a failed state, and would perform like one.
See for example this subthread where pro-2nd amendment Motteposters argued that it protected a private right to own siege artillery and warships at the time of the founding.
At some point there is going to be litigation over whether the 2nd amendment permits private ownership of killer drones. The legal arguments will be about as edifying as the litigation over full-auto and scary-looking semi-auto rifles, but the results will matter.
I'm not entirely convinced the distinction is necessary. Anyone who is has the resources and know-how required to procure and operate an F-35 or Nuclear Weapon is going to be a lot more than just some "fringe whacko" in a compound somewhere. We're talking Bond villains not Branch Davidians, and you don't send cops to arrest a Bond villain, you send SOCOM to "extract" them.
The Branch davidians could easily have had sarin and the like(and indeed, Aum Shinrikyo had chemical weapons, biological weapons, and might have had nukes).
If access to chemical weapons is incompatible with a stable modern society, AND Aum Shinrikyo had chemical weapons, the only possible conclusion is that Japan is a not a stable modern society.
Would you endorse that statement?
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Speaking as something close to a 2A absolutist, this can be mitigated the same way the US can regulate psi-emitters and other forms of bio-engineered insectoid war-horrors - by the FCC.
The FCC is as subject to the Second Amendment as any other part of government.
I think the idea is that since psi-emitters and insectoid war-horrors are fictional, they are regulated by the FCC as fictional media.
Oh, I thought we were talking about actual spectrum (and some theoretical psi spectrum). Killer drones are real, ask any Russian soldier in Ukraine.
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The joke is that they'd transmit along the radio spectrum, and thus be subject to FCC regulation.
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