Quote:
So in short the court has to either overturn Miller or suffer the unintended consequences of making fully automatic "militia" weapons (& probably more) available for self defense.
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Don't agree. Heller came right out and said that reading Miller to mean that civilian ownership of machine guns were protected by the 2A would be an "alarming" interpretation. Scalia immediately followed with the passage wherein he wrote "We therefore read Miller to mean . . ." that the 2A protects weapons in common use for lawful purposes of the type that folks would keep at home (
paraphrased, of course).
It seems to be a quite novel interpretation for a majority which also opined:
Quote:
Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small
arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and
tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited
the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the
protected right cannot change our interpretation of the
right.
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Yet they DID change the interpretation in the first passage (because they felt that private machine gun ownership would be too
alarming), further reducing the
degree of fit between the 1st clause, and the right itself.