I wish to nitpick your discription of the 1930s federal gun law as taking away the ability of most people to own combat firearms. That law was rather carefull

I wish to nitpick your discription of the 1930s federal gun law as taking away the ability of most people to own combat firearms. That law was rather carefully crafted to try to avoid taking away the right to own "combat" firearms, because those firearms are exactly the ones to which the 2d amendment would apply. Rather, it focused on cannons and bombs, which they could argue were not personal arms, and on what it called "tools of assassination", silenced weapons and automatic weapons. Automatic weapons were not common combat firearms at the time, most soldiers would have rifles that were bolt action, a few semi-automatic. At the time the law was passed the New Dealers were fighting the Supreme Court, which was overturning a lot of their grand plans, so the gun law was crafted with that in mind. It doesn't even technically ban the "class III" weapons, it just requires an excise tax which is difficult to pay. It is still probably an unconstitutional law, and it's benefits in fighting crime are probably not very big -- the old tommy gun gangsters of the 1930s were not driven out of business by lack of automatic weapons, they were tracked down and killed and arrested by traditional police work (some of which was unconstitutional in other ways). A larger objection I have is to your claim "we've already mostly lost out ability to enact forceful change. Those days are gone." I think the general trend from 1776 to now, has been towards a more just, more democratic, more ideal society. There are major deviations on the way, and we are currently regressing, but still ahead of where we were in 1960, I think. I also think robot technology will not always benefit just the rich and powerful in conflicts. Hobbiests can already build model aircraft which carry a WRT54G and do auto-pilot; when Palestinians hack a cell phone onto a model plane and send a few ounces of incendiary or a grenade on a long, slow trip to be fairly precisely delivered via GPS or cell tower positioning, then you will know the temporary imbalence is ending.