[glenra]

> I'm saying if you punt on tanks, you aren't actually an absolutist about the right to bear arms.

Black's Law Dictionary defines the word arms as "anything that a man wears for his defense, or takes in his hands as a weapon."

The word "arms" in the right to keep and bear arms explicitly meant weapons that could be carried by a single infantryman. It was never about (and still isn't about) tanks, or cannon, or warships, or nukes. So no, you don't have to be committed to allowing tanks to be fully keen on the right to keep and bear arms.

(if you still doubt this, focus on the word "bear". You can't "bear" a tank, if anything a tank bears you.)

( https://www.buckeyefirearms.org/iii-what-arms-meant-circa-17... )

That said, it actually happens to be totally legal for private citizens to own a tank in most countries, including the US. They're expensive, get terrible gas mileage, probably not street-legal to drive on the freeway, unlikely to fit in your garage and the neighbors are bound to complain if you fire the main gun...but you totally could own one (and drive it around your own private property) if so inclined.

[philipkglass]

I don't think that any American civilians own a working MANPADS, regardless of willingness to undergo background checks or pay for tax stamps. And that's explicitly designed for a single infantryman. I'm not well versed in the constitutional law but there seems to be a principle that extremely dangerous weapons will not be owned by civilians in the US, regardless of historical precedents, textualism, originalism, or any other contrary principles.

I'm also curious about the constitutional ramifications of the ban on civilian ownership of machine guns manufactured after 1986. Could any class of small arms be gradually banned by specifying a date of manufacture cutoff for legality in a similar way? Seems contrary to a plain reading of the 2a to phase out weapons this way but I know that my layman's plain reading is worth very little here.

[pdpi]

> That said, it actually happens to be totally legal for private citizens to own a tank in most countries, including the US.

Case in point: A few years ago I had a company outing to go play tank paintball. This was in the UK.

[tomatotomato37]

Actually it may also be about warships; the US has language related to the issuing of letters of marque embedded within the Constitution, and issued them from the nation's creation up through the civil war.

[sk5t]

Is it your position that you could purchase and possess shells for your main battle tank without uncomfortable inquiries by BATF?

[glenra]

You could register the gun and make it fully legal to use under the NFA in which case yes, you could possess shells and even fire them. There's paperwork, but it's possible and some people do it. Um, here:

https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/operational-tank-for-sale-a...

(Making, say, a 50 caliber gun legal under the NFA is indeed somewhat more onerous than owning a shotgun. And a gun rights advocate certainly could care about trying to make it less so but they're not required to care about it because - as I said above - a tank doesn't count as "arms".)

[maxerickson]

It's excellent that your post arguing that, sure they are absolutists, is full of word parsing and technicalities.

[rayiner]

Even say free speech absolutists don’t pretend that the interpretative process doesn’t matter. Pretty much everyone recognizes say that fraud was never protected as free speech.