That's NOT a Gedanken thought experiment. A Gedanken thought experiment is what you do AFTER your opponent bases his logic on something NOT happening. In the Gedanken experiment, you then show how his logic falls apart if things DO happen.
To wit: U.S. versus Miller. In that Supreme Court case the Justices wrote that Miller was indeed in violation of federal law because he did not (there's that key word) show that his sawed off shotgun was a military weapon. And that sounds all great on the surface until you do a Gendanken thought experiment and realize that if Miller HAD shown that his weapon was used by U.S. troops in their most recent war experience (e.g. in the trenches in the Great War), that clearly he was abiding by Constitutional law.