Ironically the police- in theory entirely civilian- have a worse reputation than our actual military. This article The Police Were a Mistake | The New Republic has the subheadline “Law enforcement agencies have become the standing armies that the Founders feared.” And this article Adam Serwer: Bust the Police Unions - The Atlantic criticizing the role of police unions in obstructing efforts to eliminate police brutality compares them unfavorably to the Army:
Yet the military—hardly exempt from questions about fair pay or capricious leadership—lacks a union. This is a matter of tradition, not law, but it reflects an understanding that such an organized political entity would be dangerous, placing the military beyond democratic accountability and civilian control. Instead, the military relies on public support, which means its members must maintain an outward stance of political neutrality—even when a sitting president expects them to interfere on his behalf.
If its constitutional to ban machine guns, then its also constitutional to… say…ban all guns except for revolvers, one shot shotguns, and bolt action hunting rifles, and impose draconian limits on their public carry, right?
That’s just it. Gun control proponents decry what they see as gun rights advocates’ “absolutist” refusal to go along with “reasonable” firearms restrictions, saying that it amounts to insisting that psychopaths have a right to own rotary cannon and missile launchers. But for people who believe in gun rights it isn’t that gun control might necessarily lead to near-total bans; it’s that if you concede the issue, it could. Are guns just another thing that fall under the general authority of the government to regulate, restrict or ban? Or is possession of weapons as fundamental a right as free speech, of freedom of conscience, of peaceful assembly? A liberty in other words?
As pointed out several times previously, none of the provisions of the Bill of Rights have ever been held to recognize or secure a boundless libertarian immunity from government interference. The Constitution protects freedom of assembly for example. That doesn’t mean that police can’t order an unruly crowd to disperse or even that cities can’t require parade permits. But would we really want the government to have the authority to pass a crowd control ordinance that pre-defined all unauthorized gatherings as riots? What gun rights proponents want is for firearms laws to have to meet the Supreme Court standard of Strict scrutiny - Wikipedia