Even most automatic firearms are relatively simple, as machines go; what's complicated are the politics of the modern United States on the subject of this particular class of machine.

Is it somehow "conservative" to say that I've never really understood why that should be? One person, who wishes badly enough to kill another, will invariably find some tool to use in the attempt, and firearms are far from the only tools which can be used to inflict lethal injury on a human being. There is no more inherent controversy in this statement than in the statement that, should you find yourself with a nail to drive and no hammer with which to do so, you'll find some other expedient and drive your nail with it -- perhaps you'll hit it with a crowbar, or half a brick, or so forth.

Using a hammer is the easiest way to drive a nail, but the variety of means by which to do so is, if not necessarily infinite, then certainly bounded only by the limits of human ingenuity. If you wish nails not to be driven, why then does it make sense to ban hammers, rather than to place nail-driving beyond the pale of law -- and then enforce that law, as firmly as you find necessary to discourage whatever recalcitrance you encounter on the part of inveterate carpenters?