The
Miller court ducked the issue, while remaining within the letter of logic.
They didn't say that short barrel shotguns had no military use, what they said was that they had not been presented evidence of such use. And an even stricter interpretation is that they had not been presented evidence that the short barrel shotgun in the case (ser#xxxx) had military use.
And because the court was not given evidence to the contrary to consider, they ruled the regulation, registration, and taxation of the gun (and all in the same class) as legal and valid.
As to reopening the registry? Not going to happen if there is any public debate or knowledge of an attempt. Why? Because machine guns are the demons of the gun world to the antis. All guns are bad, to them, but machine guns are the worst. And for the bulk of the past century, the general public has been taught that by our media industry.
Show me any movie or TV show where other than military use, the machine gun is used by anyone other than the bad guys, or the cops/ lone hero fighting them.
I know lots of people, strong supporters of RKBA, who draw the line at machine guns. Several have said that while they would trust ME with one, they wouldn't trust the general pubic.
This is the mindset. ANYTHING that can be mis-represented to make it look like easing the access of the general public to machineguns is going to play badly for us in the public's eyes.
They will ignore the fact that during the entire 80years (rounded off) of legal, registered machinegun ownership there has only been 1 (perhaps 2) crimes committed with the registered guns by their legal owners (and the one crime I know of, the legal owner was also a police officer, gone bad apparently).
I've said it before, I'll say it again, the only possible way we could get the registry reopened is for a us to have not just a pro gun administration, but one that would accept a quiet, administrative editorial change to the law, without putting it in front of the press and the public.
Just slip it in with all the other crap they are constantly proposing. Change line #xxx in law #xxx to remove "after the effective date of this legislation" (or something similar), without making any noise about it. If it gets through and the anti's find out afterwards (and they will be ticked), they'll have to go through the courts to get it repealed, or pass a repealing law.
A return to the 1985 law, the same as it was from 34 on, with the tax, background check, local CLEO approval, all of that, just allow new (or newly discovered) guns to be added to the registry. Not so much a big deal, right?
Well, not to us, but a HUGE deal the antis and any politician who wants a highly visible issue to champion.
The risks of bringing legal machinegun ownership into the spotlight are big. Highly unlikely we would reap any benefit, and extremely likely we would lose something we currently still have. What do you think will happen to the supply of legal guns if our govt remembers that it hasn't changed the tax on them since 1934? A $10,000 per unit, per transfer tax (instead of the current $200) is not farfetched.
In any public discussion, the antis will take the mass murders commited with semi autos, and shout about how much WORSE it would have been with a MACHINEGUN!!!!
There is a miniscule chance we could sneak across the minefield quietly, at night, without getting blown up. If we try to do it in daylight, with alerted defenders shooting at us, the odds hit zero real quick, and go down from there.
