The law pertains only to guided missiles. In your article, you wrote, “Should any adult be able to own a shoulder-launched missile?” and it was to that comment that I referred.

FYI: A bazooka is a shoulder-launched missile system. You can find them for sale at various auction sites.

The M134 Minigun is primarily a fire suppression weapon but it also has been mounted as an anti-aircraft gun on various types of ground vehicles.

The government effectively regulates certain military weapons simply by not selling them to private citizens. Surplus explosives are destroyed or sold to other sovereign nations along with their launching systems.

Gun ownership is a right on par with freedom of speech. But, for the sake of argument, let’s say that guns were regulated like automobiles.

Automobile ownership and operation is not regulated by the federal government; it’s strictly a state power. Other than a title transfer, you don’t have to register an automobile; you don’t need a driver’s license to operate an automobile; there is no requirement for insurance or a minimum age to operate. You only need all those things if you wish to operate a motor vehicle on public roads.

When you operate a motor vehicle on public roads, you must a have a driver’s license, which is easily obtained and is valid the moment your payment is accepted. Subject to certain restrictions based on the size of the motor vehicle and whether or not it is for hire, your driver’s license is valid to operate a motor vehicle in every state in the union. It’s called nationwide reciprocity.

Liability insurance is based on actuarial-standard risk assessment. This means the insurance company’s exposure or risk to casualty claims. Liability insurance does not cover deliberate criminal acts by the insured person.

In the United States in 2017, the CDC reported 486 deaths due to accidental discharge of a firearm and an estimated 9,739 injuries sufficiently severe to require hospitalization. We live in a nation of 328 million people. The best estimates of the number of gun owners are in the rage of 75 million to 80 million. That yields a rate of 12.78 total casualties per 100,000 gun owners.

Compare those figures to a CDC estimate of 223,649 injuries requiring hospitalization and 9,463 fatalities among motor vehicle occupants. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the number of licensed drivers in the U.S. is 212,159,728. The rate of injury and deaths of motor vehicle occupants is 110.01 per 100,000 licensed drivers or 8.6 times the rate of accidental injuries and deaths from accidental gunshots.

This would yield an annual premium for an average gun owner liability insurance policy of $166 or $13.81/month.

So in return for registering ownership of a gun, obtaining an operator’s license, and accepting the requirement for a low-cost insurance policy (only if the gun is carried somewhere other than the owner’s residence), the owner would be free to carry his or her gun anywhere in the United States except for places like inside of a public school, certain government offices, and such. Business would have the option of prohibiting the carrying of guns on their premises, just as they can restrict parking in areas owned and controlled by the business.

Of course, the states would have the option of making the license easy or difficult to obtain, but visitors to the more restrictive states would still be able to carry their guns, based on the free-with-two-boxtops licenses issued by their home state. No background checks; no restrictions on magazines or gun type (after all, the same driver’s license can be used for a Toyota Corolla or a Dodge Challenger Hellcat).

Hmm… you might be on to something there. I think a lot of gun owners might go for it.

In the end, however, you still missed the point: editing does not mean altering the meaning of the work to be edited.