I understand owning guns. I don't understand taking libertarian ideals go the length of owning untraceable guns that can be sold to a random person with no oversight.
On the other side, there have been several attempts to open up access to the national background check system to private sellers, but every time it gets blocked by the left, as voluntary background checks are largely seen as an ineffective half measure.
As noted in the other response, the historical reason is that private gun-ownership (usually in relation to a local militia of some sort) is the only protection against a tyrannical government. In the era of the Revolutionary War, that was certainly true.
I don't happen to believe that is true any more, and that the 2nd amendment is an anachronism. But, I'm in a minority (where the majority in the US seems to prefer limited gun ownership - more so than what we have now, but not complete bans and confiscations, as Australia saw recently).
I found yesterday that full automatic assault rifles are not legal in the US but that's the first shit any idiot brings up here when they want to paint Americans as "crazy".
Don't get more wrong, as things progress in Europe, we're eventually going to need those "crazy" American weapons.
That's incorrect, they are legal federally, but some states have made them illegal.
In order to purchase an automatic weapon, you need to submit a form to the FBI, provide fingerprints, have your local police chief sign-off (or create an LLC) and pay a $200 tax.
It's a very thorough background check.
Not many people buy them since the cheapest weapons cost $10,000 and go up to $50,000. This is due to the limited supply since civilians can only buy automatic weapons that were built before 1986.
It is about $500-$1000 USD per year. You need a secure place to hold your arms, keep extremely well maintained records of anything you buy, and if you stop paying your SOT any post-86 things you have manufactured must be destroyed.
If think you might also have to file a form 1 for everything you manufacture and that takes 1-5 months even stretching out to a year in some cases.
This also comes with a round of your prints being sent to the FBI, ATF, and I'm assuming a bunch of other three letter acronyms that you don't ever want to meet.
But, if you can do that, get a drill press, and make friends at your local PD you can make some good money on the side by building post-86 dealer samples and handling transfers for your local PD.
Believe it or not, but by my current understanding factories cannot ship guns directly to police offices, they must still be handled through an FFL.
I happen to disagree that owning an handgun (or even a semi-automatic rifle) will actually be very influential in the event of a dictatorial takeover, but I can understand the logic.
So not even having guns there, a gun culture would have likely saved lives.
(this is based on an account of an elderly man who was in the concentration camps and later came to learn about guns as part of his vow of "never again". There is an organization based on this principle called "Jews for the preservation of firearms ownership.")
It can't hurt.