I’m sure we’ll never be rid of the Hughes Amendment. Same two reasons as everyone else has said. The whole thing about ownership of machine guns being intolerable outside the gun community and machine gun owners having too much money tied into them. Best thing we can hope for like Armed Canadian said is an amnesty period.

The courts are going to leave a good bit of room for government regulation of firearms, either directly or incidentally, no matter how all this turns out.

I thought Gura was too quick to restrict the right. WE want this to vague and not even address machine guns. Leave the possibility to be as broad as possible.

I agree he could easily said mortars or nukes as extreme examples. If asked directly say that this case is about banning handguns.

The Justices ask a lot of questions to try to get idea of how far the attorney has thought out the implications. They generally will narrow it down.

As to reasonable regulation could be zoning restrictions on ranges or not allowed to target shoot where houses are close and to prevent felons as listed in the militia clause.

My response is HERE

Machine guns aren’t at issue in Heller. Anything they say about machine guns will be dicta, but that doesn’t matter much because the lower courts will pay attention to it in deciding how to construct the scope of the second amendment.

I’m sharing everyone’s frustration with the machine gun issue, but it’s tempered by the fact that we’ll likely win on every other front if I’m reading the tea leaves correctly. Can we live with a second amendment that doesn’t protect machine guns?

I think the key is an incremental approach. Take the individual right, which I honestly never expected to see in my lifetime and go with that. Then build on it gradually, allowing the public to see that gun rights don’t lead to blood in the streets. We’ll never win some people over, but the intellectually honest people will, in time be won over. After all most states have shall issue concealed carry now without the scary gunfight scenarios the other side predicted.

The thing to avoid is declaring classes or types of arms as illegal right off the bat. The bottom line is that currently machine guns are NOT illegal at the federal level. If you can find a pre 86 MG for sale and you can jump through the paper work hoops then you can own one. Yes, it sucks that a $100 piece of stamped metal costs over $4000 now, but that’s better than nothing. I’d like to avoid making things worse at this point, and that’s why I’m worried about the oral arguments that sounded to me like 86 all over again where machine gun owners are sacrificed for the “greater good”.

I’m not a lawyer, obviously, so I’d like to know if the justices are likely to have an ruling that actually covers machine guns in DC v. Heller? I would think they would keep to a more narrow opinion that just deals with the handgun ban itself.