Communities around the U.S. have seen shootings carried out with weapons converted to fully automatic in recent years, fueled by a staggering increase in small pieces of metal or plastic made with a 3D printer or ordered online. Laws against machine guns date back to the bloody violence of Prohibition-era gangsters. But the proliferation of devices known by nicknames such as Glock switches, auto sears and chips has allowed people to transform legal semi-automatic weapons into even more dangerous guns, helping fuel gun violence, police and federal authorities said.
The (ATF) reported a 570% increase in the number of conversion devices collected by police departments between 2017 and 2021, the most recent data available.
The devices that can convert legal semi-automatic weapons can be made on a 3D printer in about 35 minutes or ordered from overseas online for less than $30. They’re also quick to install.
“It takes two or three seconds to put in some of these devices into a firearm to make that firearm into a machine gun instantly,” Dettelbach said.
That will never fly as a “middle ground” because the second amendment was never written as a hunter’s law. It’s a Revolutionary, shooting-at-people law that didn’t take into account advances in technology because they didn’t matter.
What they had different were people upset with a government across the ocean and soldiers in their homes, and the only people upset with the colonists were slaves that weren’t allowed guns, education, or freedom. So that made the problem we face way less likely.
Any middle ground like you suggest would take a constitutional amendment and mass adoption, and the ones with the guns that aren’t likely to shoot up the place (Jan 6th excluded) are not keen on either.
the 2nd amendment always took into account the advances in weaponry by tying it to state militias. The goal was to keep the feds from disarming the states, not to allow everyone to buy a personal nuke.
At the beginning of the revolutionary war, militias, minutemen, and even the Continental army relied on soldiers to bring their own weapons from home. They would never have held off British troops long enough to have a revolution at all otherwise. This was an 8 year war, and only after 1776 did they begin to supply the Continental army with arms from France on the regular. Spain as well.
It was absolutely their intention to have regular citizens armed. With nuclear weapons? No. Be serious. With small arms able to be used by one person. To my knowledge, private citizens didn’t have access to cannons at a reliable quantity to count on them in battle.
This is what our flawed founding fathers experienced first hand and amended the Constitution with.
Look either you believe the constitution applies to new weapons or it doesn’t. Be serious.