(06-15-2016, 04:21 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Problem is we have a right to self defense here. We have a Constitution that makes it very difficult to strip folk of their rights and a very divided electorate.
That is not the issue. Rights are not absolute. Your free speech rights does not give you the right to commit libel. Your right to bear arms does not give you the right the bear ANY kind of arms, for example WMDs In fact machine guns were banned 80 years ago and based on a quick search it appears nobody has brought this matter to the Supreme Court. As far as I can tell the argument is that one does not need a WMD or even a machine gun to provide self protection. Similar arguments could be made for tanks, flamethrowers, rpgs and most military arms of the present day or recent past. Even today self-defense efforts typically employ weapons of much smaller firepower (see Table 11) than the large-magazine semiautomatic weapons often used in mass-casualty shootings. When I see a police officer on duty he/she is typically armed with a pistol, not something like this.
I think it is pretty clear than if both parties decided they wanted to ban "assault weapons" the courts would have no problem upholding the constitutionality of this ban. The Second Amendment is no barrier to gun control. Politics is. The US is being increasingly drenched in guns because the Republican party sees fit to focus on the rights of owners and makers of guns. Similarly the US is being drenched with sexual politics (e.g. the silly campus antics discussed elsewhere on this site) because the Democratic party sees fit to focus on the rights of sexual deviants.
In both cases this serves to distract Americans from other issues, which elites would prefer they not focus on.