When the 2nd amendment was ratified, the best hand weapon available was a single shot rifle that took close to a minute to reload. A skilled person could get that down to 15 seconds. They also had poor accuracy which is why the infantry charge was a common military practice. By even the US civil war the infantry charge was becoming suicidal, but the practice continued until the end of WW I.
Back in the 18th century hand carried infantry weapons were little different from hunting weapons and often were the same weapon. The Minute Men of the Revolutionary War were farmers and homesteaders who tuned up with their hunting weapons.
Even cannon in the 18th century were less destructive than hand carried weapons available today. Hunting weapons and weapons of war have diverged and are now made differently.
Though the primary difference between a semi-automatic assault weapon and a semi-automatic deer rifle is the barrel. The hunting rifle is made for low rate of fire and for accuracy at the longest range possible. More like a sniper rifle. An assault rifle has a hardened barrel for high rate of fire (won't warp as easily if it gets hot).
An assault rifle looks more bad ass, like a Honda Civic that has a fancy paint job, lowered, with changed exhaust. It may have better performance than a stock Civic, but it isn't a supercar. Because assault rifles have hardened barrels, they are the choice if you're going to shoot up a school because you can maintain a higher rate of fire and there are large magazines available for most assault rifles, but not for deer hunting rifles.
Assault rifles are optimized for killing people. But other weapons of war are more dangerous in civilian hands. Imagine the danger if shoulder launched missile launchers were legal for civilian use? We'd be seeing the same sort of people who shoot up places shooting down airliners.
I've read the reason the crisis of critical workers not showing up is worse among TSA because the bulk of TSA people are entry level with no seniority. They don't have much vested in the retirement system or other government benefits more senior government workers have, so for them quitting and moving on to something else is more of an option. For people with 20 years experience, the idea of quitting has much more of a barrier.
I have a friend who is a biologist with the USDA. She hates her job, but sticks with it because she can retire early in 2020 and get a decent pension that would be enough to scrape by on if she needed to fall back on it. She is one of those people who is very security conscious, so she doesn't want to jump into the private sector without a fallback income. I think she's overly cautious, but I've known others like her.
I haven't talked to her lately, but I suspect she's furloughed. Her project is a research project being done with Washington State University.
I think #1 above will be a worse situation for the government than #2, but both would cause havoc.
In the 5th Party System, working for the government was a very secure thing for those who were very nervous about job security. You didn't get rich, but the benefits were good and the retirement package left you in pretty good shape in the end. My father pressured me to get a government job because he saw how our neighbor had done. He was able to retire at 55 with a pretty healthy pension. I knew I wouldn't be able to deal with the bureaucracy. I'm too independent to be a cog in a wheel for very long.
During the 6th Party System the Republicans have been trying at every turn to make working for the government more and more aversive. They have demonized government work, tried to cut benefits, and generally made life more difficult. There are some in the current administration praising the shutdown like the writer who claimed to be a "senior White House official" who wrote an anonymous op-ed the other day:
I’m A Senior Trump Official, And I Hope A Long Shutdown Smokes Out The Resistance
I strongly think it's Stephen Miller. He's that crazy.
Conservatives wring their hands at the growth of the civil service over the last 80 years, but the world has also become much more complex and the US has moved from an isolationist power with an army smaller than Finland's to the dominant world power. As technology and complexity has grown, so has the need to regulate industries involved in these things. We need more workers to turn the gears of government because governing is much more complex than it was decades ago. Wanting to go back to the government bureaucracy of the 19th century is impossible because the world is not in the 19th century anymore.
Or bigger sheep than we could imagine.
You can own machine guns in some states, but the requirements for ownership from the BATF and usually the state government make it difficult. Plus you can't own a new one. There is a cutoff year of manufacture.
But in warfare, a semi-auto makes sense. In WW II the standard US M-1 rifle was semi-auto and most other countries had bolt action rifles. US squads also had more support weapons, but the firepower of a US squad was significantly more than anyone elses, in part because of the weight of fire possible with semi-auto vs bolt action rifles.
After the war the US Army analyzed the effectiveness of US squad weapons and US soldiers. One thing they found was US soldiers were more likely to cut and run and were more likely to cower under fire than most European soldiers (for Europeans the war was an existential struggle for the existence of their nation, but for Americans their families and country were safe so there was less motivation to die for the cause), but when US infantry had to stand and fight, they were much more effective than anyone elses army. One action studied was a firefight between one German and one American squad in Tunisia. The Germans had better tactics and experience, but the American squad obliterated them under a hail of fire.
Semi-automatics do require more attention to keep clean, but even in semi-automatic mode they are often better weapons of combat than non-semi-suto weapons except for certain situations like if accuracy at range is an issue. The M-16 and its descendants for the US military have a full auto, short burst, and semi-auto setting. This came out of the WW II study. US troops who know they can fire automatically are more likely to shoot in a firefight. The short burst setting saves ammunition while helping with the psychological aspect.
The powder you use in a semi-automatic makes a difference too. When the M-16 was introduced the Army insisted on using powder not recommended by the manufacturer and the weapon got a rep for jamming in combat. When used with the right powder there is far less residue left in the mechanism and less cleaning is required.
For personal use, a revolver, bolt action rifle, or shotgun is probably adequate for most situations.
