In response to comments over at Arms and the Law:
I think the strategy for reclaiming the RKBA should be inside out.
Begin by firmly establishing the basic right of ordinary citizens to possess ordinary weapons–handguns, rifles, and shotguns. That’s what Heller’s doing.
Then the right to openly carry those arms must be defended.
Then work on concealed carry and carry in schools, government buildings, and so forth.
Finally, loosen the rules on automatics.
Along the way bring the BATFX to heel, limit NICS denials to violent felons and adjudicated insanity (or simply accept that if you can’t be trusted with a gun, you can’t be trusted with your liberty and must remain institutionalized until you can be), and begin offering firearms training in high schools.
(NB: Of course, some of these things are going to happen simultaneously. I’m not advocating holding back when an opportunity presents itself; I’m simply suggesting the general direction things should take.)
Once the RKBA is firmly settled, and guns become ordinary again in the mind of the public, we can start worrying about the fringes.
Starting at the fringes and working in, trying to argue that private citizens of course should be able to possess nukes, is going to scare folks away.
That said, here’s the way I think about weapons such as cannons, bombs, jet fighters, and the like:
The Constitution is all about balance of power. The Second Amendment is about the balance of power between the People and their government. Any discussion of what weapons the People have the right to possess must be based on that balance.
Specifically, the balance between the damage a given weapon can cause versus the ability of a person to wield it.
A single person with a rifle can kill perhaps a dozen folk before being stopped by a well-armed militia. A machine gun might double the toll, but we’re not talking order-of-magnitude.
Therefore, it is reasonable to allow citizens to possess ordinary weapons, even high-powered machine guns, hand grenades, and the like.
A single person with a nuke can wipe out a small city.
We do not want a deranged individual to be able to do that. The military provides rigorous training and elaborate command and control structures to ensure that no one person can trigger a nuke by accident or out of madness. The power is diffuse.
Thus, the rule is that the greater the destructive power, the more diffuse and regulated that power must be.
A side note:
The freedom of the press does not shield major newspapers from the necessity of following the building, safety, and environmental codes that would apply to any other factory of the same size.
Since nukes and even conventional ordnance can present a substantial risk if not stored, maintained, and transported properly, I think it is reasonable to expect owners of such to be subject to appropriate regulation and inspection.
[...] In a recent post, I argued that Heller, the Washington D.C. gun-ban case, should not raise fears that the Second Amendment will place nukes and other WMDs in the hands of the people, on balance-of-power grounds and on hazardous materials regulation grounds. However, this is not the primary argument. [...]