Hoover’s lawyers asked Howard last week to rule that the National Firearms Act, a 1934 law that restricted machine gun ownership by creating a tax and license requirement on them, conflicts with the U [sic] Constitution’s Second Amendment guarantee of a right to bear arms. [More]
If the standard is whether NFA is consistent with the Second Amendment’s text and historical understanding, of course, it conflicts.
Whether the rulers will admit that or not is a whole ‘nother story.
[Via Jess]
“Whether the rulers will admit that or not is a whole ‘nother story.”
They weren’t exactly in the mood when they ruled in US v Miller. But maybe things have changed a bit since 1939.
A lot of people misconstrue what Miller says and doesn’t say, and the media and government have no incentive to correct them. The only hard ruling in Miller was to order the case back to the lower court to hold an actual trial (which was bever held), in order to hear evidence about whether the weapons in question were useful to a militia. The justices strongly implied that the NFA would not be constitutional against any weapon with militia/military usefulness. And the trial was never held, because the defendant had just died.
Most people don’t realize that Miller was never tried for this “offense,” much less convicted of it, despite having been dragged in to answer for it twice.