Quote from trefoil:
In merry old England, where this whole militia thing came from, the monarch mandated that citizens had to have some minimum level of arms based on what they would have had the ability to purchase. Obviously if you can mandate what a person has to own you can mandate what they can't as well: the majority of every demographic polled on this thinks limiting magazine capacity is a reasonable thing, for instance.
And you can mandate who can own what. That gets us into the devilish detail of how you'd take a gun away from someone found to be dangerously nuts, but that's a headache for the legislators. The point here is that in principle there's nothing against it. There's certainly no argument anyone can make against background checks at point of purchase.
I understand much of our law originates from England BUT this isn't England and whether or not the King could mandate who gets what etc.. it isn't the same here. We have an individual right to own and bear guns and it simply can't be taken away. Your last post was about Congress regulating the militia, but what exactly is the militia? IF it is considered the whole population capable of bearing arms, which it is according to the men who wrote and ratified the 2nd, then the same rules should apply to everyone. As an example, a civilian cop shouldn't be stationed on Wall St with an AR and body armor while every other lawful civilian in the city can't own or carry anything. If a certain amount of training or permit was required to purchase and/or carry certain firearms, I would personally be ok with that.. but they need to be accessible imo.