[shemtay]

If memory serves correctly, after the famous mafia hit “St Valentine’s Day Massacre” in Chicago with an at the time shocking body count of 7, civilian access to then state of the art machine guns was restricted, thus setting a precedent.

EDIT: I don’t think that really answers your question. The real answer is that, to a certain extent the words as written don’t matter so long as enough voters and decision makers decide that they don’t.

Moreover it is considered a very right wing viewpoint here to say that the constitution should be enforced strictly as written or originally intended.

[Throwawayaerlei]

And as a result our first post-WWII new and first General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG, TL;DR: barrels are in field quick change consumables) was the awful M60.

Now replaced by a couple of Belgium Fabrique Nationale (FN) models, they're a generally very competent company. Last time I checked they had the contract to make machine gun barrels and ran three hammer forges for this and other guns.