The Supreme Court said that machine guns can be banned, that is true. But the Supreme Court meant real machine guns, not "machine guns" as one jurisdiction erroneously defines them. 50 states and the federal government define machine guns as fully automatic firearms, not semi-automatic ones. The courts are not going to let D.C. remove a right simply by creating a definition that is not supported by fact. If you truly believe that, you are a very simple man.
The Supreme Court created a very simple test in Heller. If the gun is an "ordinary" and "common" gun and is not overly dangerous (real machine guns) then it is protected. The fact is that of the 50 states that allow handguns, all 50 allow semiautomatic handguns. Semiautomatic handguns are legal under federal law. No other city has banned semiautomatic handguns exclusively, they are only banned in other cities such as Chicago when all handguns are banned. Semiautomatic handguns now outsell revolvers almost 3 to 1 (1,021,260 semiautomatics sold in 2007 compared to 382,069 revolvers according to ATF). Semiautomatics are now the most common handguns among police and the military as well. . These facts expose the obvious, semiautomatic handguns are both common and ordinary and easily meet the Supreme Court's test, regardless of any definition that D.C. attempts to create out of thin air. In the end, the courts will both allow and protect them as well as revolvers, derringers, and single-shot handguns.



Posted June 27, 2008 | 11:28 AM (EST)