are we talking about the same thing when we speak of "assault weapons"?

[AtheistCrusader]

130. Actually, it does support my assertion.

A 20 shot semi-auto rifle existed prior to the ratification of the US Constitution, and was fielded by the Austrians at the same time.

This speaks to the cyclic rate of weapons at the time the 2nd Amendment was ratified, which is, for the first 20 shots, directly relevant to today's debate.

Hand-cranking took about 150 revolutions to recharge the tank, and the Austrians developed a wagon-tank system that recharged them much faster.

You said:

"Nah, the founders had no idea what COULD be invented in the future....
....what will gun rights advocates claim is he "modern musket" in a hundred years? (or 5 for that matter?)"

To which the poster above me asserted that semi-auto technology was 100 years old. I corrected that, as the technology is 260 years old.

The founders knew about this device. They had a direct ancestral preview of modern semi-auto weapons, before they ratified the 2nd amendment. They also clearly had no problem with allowing civilians access to then state-of-the-art weaponry.

As to your question about the future, I suspect the courts will have to get involved, as they have with rocket launchers and other items classified as Destructive Devices, but I expect the future will have to deal with lasers, and directed energy weapons of other types. To take one example, lasers, I suspect that would be regulated in the same manner as explosives. You can't use a grenade defensively, per the courts as a 2nd amendment protected implement, because by its nature, you cannot use it against a single person/target. Same with a laser, whose beam will go right on forever. Nobody wants the Comcast rebroadcast satellite getting winged by some dude shooting a car jacker or something.