Nitpick: the 1934 National Firearms Act did not actually ban automatic weapons and short-barreled shotguns. It did require federal registration and a tax which at the time amounted to something like 1000% of the value of a sawed-off shotgun, which the federal government swore blue in the face was merely a revenue-generating device, not in any way meant to be prohibatory :rolleyes:. The 1934 law is moot in localities (such as my state of Minnesota) which ban automatic weapons at the state level. I don’t know if anyone has tried to legally own a federally-registered automatic weapon and fought a state restriction over it.
In general, for decades people acquiesced to strong state and local limitations on gun possession (no auto weapons, may-issue carry laws, municipal level handgun bans) because there wasn’t the sense of alarm that we were heading down the slope to total gun abolition; no one felt that Big Brother was out to completely disarm the citizenry. It wasn’t until ever-expanding Federal restrictions and the open proclaiming of some that yes, a total abolition was what they were working towards, that you got the backlash we’ve seen in recent years.
Nothing in those statements says or fairly implies anything about the law being a talisman to prevent harm to my client. Nothing in those statements suggests I need a “reality check”. That said, I’d prefer to discuss the topic in this thread. If you feel the need to pit me, you have that right.
If we were to revisit the 2nd amendment either by the legislative/state route or by Constitutional convention, I’m strongly inclined to believe it would be “updated” to explicitly note the individual right to bear arms, and dispense with a lot of that 18th century “militia” language.
Once again, illustrating why you’re one my favorite posters here.
To be clear, I don’t expect the Second Amendment to be repealed any time in my lifetime. All I’m saying is that certain decisions could bring support for it incrementally lower, and move the (very long) timescale on which it might eventually be repealed incrementally closer. Then, too, it’s not an all-or-nothing matter: Even with the Second Amendment entirely intact, the gun culture of the United States can change in a nearly-continuous fashion. A world in which the laws are exactly as they are now, but in which every law-abiding citizen independently decided not to own a gun, would be difficult to distinguish from one where ownership of guns were illegal.
Once again, illustrating why you’re one my favorite posters here.