Delta and United join list of companies to cut ties with the NRA - maybe this truly is the end of gun rights in the US?

[Final-Fan]

sc94597 said:

Final-Fan said: 

The Heller opinion specifically recoils from the earlier Miller opinion's conflation of military arms with personal arms.  This is literally the opposite of what you said, unless you and I have very different definitions of "militia".  This does not necessarily mean your conclusion is wrong (or right*).  But other conclusions based on the same misinterpretation would be highly suspect. 

*I would certainly argue that minimally modified assault rifles qualify as "dangerous and unusual" firearms. 

Scalia (who wrote the Heller decision) didn't equivocate the military and the militia. The militia included all persons capable of military service, but weren't necessary members of a military. 

“It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service — M-16 rifles and the like — may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large. 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.”

Assault rifles are already heavily regulated, because they have selective fire (can switch to fully automatic setting) and because they weren't in common use when their regulations were imposed. 

If you are talking about semi-automatic rifles, they aren't unusual. Semiautomatics make up something like 25% of all new rifles produced, and a majority of  newhandguns produced.

http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/u-s-gun-manufacturers-have-produced-million-guns-since/article_76eb7a60-54a4-58be-9022-f572a3588142.html

"The National Rifle Association has estimated that 25 percent of all rifles produced in the United States are AR-15s or other semiautomatic styles, while other gun groups have said the ratio is closer to 50 percent."

I was objecting to your earlier claim that "The Supreme Court in D.C vs. Heller made the decision on the following grounds: that the weapons be in "common use" by the militia."  Scalia's opinion, to the best of my current understanding (I admit I have read only portions of the opinion, not its entirety), does not view the term "militia" as a still-relevant term for describing the body of protected persons.  But in any case now that you've clarified what you mean by "militia" I am not aware of any reason to think we have fundamental disagreement on that subject. 

There is a strong incentive for some groups to inflate the numbers for the very reason that you are now using those potentially inflated numbers.  Thanks to the NRA and other gun advocacy groups, there is little in the way of comprehensive data.  However, assault rifles have become very popular in the last decade (or ever since that law expired in 2004), so I'm inclined to find the 25% figure credible for newly manufactured rifles.  But I'm very skeptical of your 50 million figure (for existing semi-automatic rifles) because even the NRA estimates the number at more like 9 to 15 million. 

P.S.  Wow, the gun industry is very sick when a company like Remington is so dependent on anti-gun-control hysteria that total Republican control of the government prompts it to declare bankruptcy.  (your source)