2. We already have one Justice who’s on record opposing Hughes on grounds other than the 2nd Amendment, and another who’s probably amenable to this approach. Now to finagle a legal angle to give us three more – or to win elections long enough to appoint them.

There is a 0% chance the federal judiciary will adopt an interpretation of the 2A that covers ordnance. Even machine guns I’d put at not much higher than 10%.

First of all, your prophecy is sort of self-fulfilling. If we argue against this, we work against it happening.

Second, WRT your hat: Would you like fries with that?

Just waiting to hear your answer as to why the official dictionary of the Congress of the United States has not be revised since 1870,

I ask this because since Sebastian has challanged all to a war of words that legal eagles refer to as ‘THE ART OF WORD.’

Of course, this very fact makes the effectiveness of the law suspect, at best, since it wouldn’t be hard for those with criminal intent to make them under normal circumstances, but this isn’t an argument about what makes for good public policy, but about what is constitutional. “

The ability or inability to enforce a law equally is a Constitutional test. Laws that are not universally enforceable lead to abuse. It creates situations where law enforcement “throws the book” at you, hoping something will stick, even when they don’t have solid evidence and a clear theory of the crime.

It should never have needed to be spelled out, so it’s a derivative test of Constitutionality used by the courts. If I were re-writing, I guess I’d probably put some verbiage in about the inability to legislate the impossible. Congress never should have even debated the idea of legislating pi=3.

Anyway, my point being, that if it is impossible to effectively police the manufacture of destructive devices, then we should only regulate the use of them because such use provides concrete, measurable damages, and focuses efforts of law enforcement to those instances where an actual complaint is made rather than prohibition.

And your point about normal/extraordinary circumstances just means it’s easier for the government to unilaterally re-draw the line in the sand. If people under normal circumstances (who are generally law-abiding) can be pushed, intimidated, and morally brow-beaten into accepting more restrictions and oppression, it’s a self-reinforcing spiral towards being able to control them futher. And there’s a whole lot of ‘extraordinary circumstance’ far short of open, pitched battles between government goons and brave rebels. The NAZIs and Soviet Union didn’t fight pitched battles with dissidents- they came for them in the night.

People who are encouraged and culturally disposed towards independence, on the other hand, will push back (mostly legally, but with extra-legal means when absolutely necessary.) I guess what I’m saying here is that by making something taboo to law-abiding people, you make it easier to oppress everybody. The theory on the totalitarian viewpoint is that if you make it undesirable to resist in the early stages, there will come a point where people are unable to resist. (And there’s no clock ticking down til doomsday, it’s a tug o’war back and forth over the middle ground, for the most part.)