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Originally Posted by John Taddeo
Hey, I hate to pee into a fan here but does anyone have any thoughts on how this whole thing shakes out in the end. You hear and read of alot of people calling for the end of private firearm ownership, In reality this is not even a plausible statement. Now we have pea brain polititians sacrificing the economic gains of their city to prove a point. A sacrifice of tax paying citizens over something that is perfectly legal. I think it hits the fan here folks these people are serious and have no idea. God help us is right. Get a pro gun promoter in here and lets move on. Why would you not use one at an outdoors show in the first place, Good Lord man.
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John, I'm not an attorney so take this for what its worth - very little. I know what I think ought to happen, but you can't pretend to know anything after Roberts turned his back on the country over Obamacare.
I believe the Heller decision stated it would be unconstitutional to ban a classification of firearms, firearms which are in common use, and any parts which are integral to the operation of the firearm. That might not have all come under one decision, but I'm pretty sure the court has already ruled on all three points. To me that makes it pretty clear that Congress can't ban "assault weapons" again such as happened in 1994. At that time, the Supreme Court was not structured favorably. That is the reason the NRA didn't pursue overturning the law back in the 90's. Today they would proceed full bore ahead as quickly as possible.
The two options are to use Robert's "you can tax anything" approach to place a high tax on possession of certain items (AR's, high capacity mags) but I don't know that the question has ever been settled on the constitutionality of placing a tax on the citizens before giving them approval to exercise their constitutional rights. The idea that it is okay for Congress to basically rewrite the 2nd Amendment to say, "Keep and bear arms so long as you have paid $xxx" doesn't seem quite right. This reminds me of the people on the left who say economically challenged minorities are disenfranchised by laws requiring them to show ID before voting because they can't afford identification. Laughable, but then shouldn't the same also be true of their proposed tax on assault weapons?
To me, the crux of the argument is that the left wants to say the public shouldn't own "implements of war". Hogwash. The very reason for the 2nd amendment is to protect the people's right to own those same implements of war being used not only by our government but also by foreign governments. Military use should offer protection under the common use provision of the Heller decision. I hope the large cap magazines would fall under that same category. My opinion is that the current structure of the court supports my view of the 2nd amendment. I was even confident enough that I cashed in on the hysteria by selling my AR10's for triple what I had invested.
The common use provision of the Heller Decision was the most interesting to me. I think the door has been opened to eliminate the current ban on short barreled rifles and shotguns, as those are currently in common use by our military.