One Pamela Haag seems to suffering under the delusion that the Second Amendment only protects weapons used for recreation, Time [1]:
“The permeable boundary between military and commercial firearms has a long history in our gun culture”
After the Orlando shooting, many Americans are questioning why assault-style weapons are commercially available in the United States.
“Assault weapon” is a political phrase, not a technical one. It refers broadly to rapid-firing semiautomatic weapons, appropriate to military use.
video:
video:
In 18 ,albeit for the wrong reason, the Court placed the right to keep and bear arms at the same category as the right to travel freely, assemble and to speak in public, Scott v. Sandford [2]:
It would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognised as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished; and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went. And all of this would be done in the face of the subject race of the same color, both free and slaves, and inevitably producing discontent and insubordination among them, and endangering the peace and safety of the State.
From United States v. Miller [3](1939)
In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession
or use of a “shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches
in length” at this time has some reasonable relationship to the
preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say
that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear
such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that
this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that
its use could contribute to the common defense.
The clear implication, albeit not the ruling, of the Court is that had Jack Miller and Frank Layton been caught carrying a Browning Automatic Rife, a military issue machine gun of the period, is that weapon would have been protected by the Second Amendment.