“Why do the police and thousands of federal agents need machine guns yet they are prohibited from the people?”
And therein lies ANOTHER big problem (one that I’d LOVE to see litigated once Kavanaugh is confirmed or, better yet, when RBG is replaced with someone similar to Kavanaugh on this issue): The 1939 case of “US v. Miller” stated that the (unconstitutional, IMHO) 1934 National Firearms Act WAS constitutionally fine (i.e. didn’t violate the 2A’s prohibition on infringing upon Miller’s right to own arms) because it didn’t prohibit him from owning it; rather, the NFA only imposed a tax, something within the power of Congress to do. Yeah, that is VERY questionable - especially when $200 at that time was like $5,000 today - would such a tax to buy an AR-15 be OK now? I think not. BUT HERE IS THE PROBLEM: in 1986, Title 18, Section 922(o) was put into law, which PROHIBITED the BATF from issuing the NFA tax stamps for full autos made after 5/18/86...IOW, they prohibited the collection of the tax that the “Miller” Court said was necessary to make the NFA legal. Thus, IMHO, you now have a situation where the government created the condition in 1986 to make a previously-constitutional law passed in 1934, suddenly unconstitutional. All we lack right now is a ruling to that effect by 5 Justices.
I think that we have a shot at this. It is not too unlike the situation with carry laws - there were, of course, all kinds of claims that it’d be like the Wild West (which wasn’t, in actual fact, all that “wild”), that people would be gunned down in the streets by the bushel...and it turns out that carry license holders are MUCH MORE law-abiding than even the police. WRT full autos, there has been exactly ONE (1) criminal act committed with a registered full auto, and that was by an off-duty cop.
We are ready for NFA repeal.
Repeal NFA....
there it is Folks!
Cheers
My recollection of the Miller decision differs from your description.
As I recall, the government made two arguments in their attempt to overturn the District Court decision in Miller's favor; that is, the District Court had decided that Miller's keeping and bearing of a short-barreled shotgun was protected by the Second Amendment.
First, the government argued that the protection of the Second Amendment applied only to members of an organized Militia. Second, they argued that the protection of the Second Amendment extended only to arms that are useful to a Militia.
The first argument was never addressed directly, but the Supreme Court obviously rejected it. Otherwise, since Miller was not a member of an organized Militia, the Court could simply have said so and the case would be over and Miller would have lost.
Instead, the Court accepted the second argument by the government; that is, that only weapons that are useful to a Militia are protected by the Second Amendment.
The Court was provided with no "judicial notice" regarding the usefulness of short-barreled shotguns, so they vacated the ruling by the District Court that had been favorable to Miller and remanded the case back to that lower court in order to decide about the usefulness of a short-barreled shotgun.
For various reasons, the lower court never took any future action. Despite that, other courts mistakenly and maliciously misstated the Miller Decision and invented the "collective right" nonsense that prevailed until the Heller Decision.
Although I think the Heller Court attempted to make it appear as though they were not overturning the Miller Decision, I think that they were.
The Miller Decision was that ONLY weapons useful to a Militia are protected. The Heller Decision ADDED Second Amendment protection for arms that are useful for self-defense.
Perhaps we can look forward to a Kavanaugh decision that recognizes that AR-15s are THE militia weapon of the twentieth century and are therefor protected. That could be fun.