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Old November 16, 2009, 01:28 PM   #1
Bartholomew Roberts
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Join Date: June 12, 2000
Location: Texas and Oklahoma area
Posts: 8,462
Will the AWB make a come-back at the State level in 2010?

Strategically, I think it will. If we lose in McDonald, where the Second Amendment is not applied against the states, then attacking at the state level avoids the problems of federal regulation and it de-emphasizes the utter loss of power by the Brady Campaign even among their advocates in the Democratic leadership (who appear to prefer Congressional power over the Brady Campaign).

If we win in McDonald, then AWBs at the state and local level actually become MORE important, not less, since the next obvious battle will be whether or not the Second Amendment protects semi-automatic weapons with a military heritage or look. The more restrictive the antis can make existing bans and the more bans they can add up at the state level, the easier it will be to look at the Supreme Court and say "These are not weapons in common use."

You can already see the groundwork for this type of thing being laid by individual cities passing AWB ordinances despite statewide preemption laws.

Of course the flip side of this is that if these efforts are overwhelmingly rejected at the state level, the antis will end up producing evidence against their common use case - which is why it is really important that gunowners respond to this push by lending a hand politically and sending some extra cash to your favorite gun rights group instead of hoarding 400 stripped lowers and hoping they don't pass legislation that makes your collection useless.
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