| Final-Fan said: 1. 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.
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1. From what I gather, Scalia uses the definition of the term militia used by the framers to derive whose weapons are protected and which criteria for "common use" should be used: merely the military's or all persons capable of military service? The term is used more than 150 times in the decision, so I am skeptical that he viewed "militia" as irrelevant.
"Petitioners take a seemingly narrower view of the militia, stating that “militias are the state- and congressionally-regulated military forces described in the Militia Clauses (art. I, §8, cls. 15–16).” Brief for Petitioners 12. Although we agree with petitioners’ interpretive assumption that “militia” means the same thing in Article I and the Second Amendment , we believe that petitioners identify the wrong thing, namely, the organized militia. Unlike armies and navies, which Congress is given the power to create (“to raise … Armies”; “to provide … a Navy,” Art. I, §8, cls. 12–13), the militia is assumed by Article I already to be in existence. Congress is given the power to “provide for calling forth the militia,” §8, cl. 15; and the power not to create, but to “organiz[e]” it—and not to organize “a” militia, which is what one would expect if the militia were to be a federal creation, but to organize “the” militia, connoting a body already in existence, ibid., cl. 16. This is fully consistent with the ordinary definition of the militia as all able-bodied men. From that pool, Congress has plenary power to organize the units that will make up an effective fighting force. That is what Congress did in the first militia Act, which specified that “each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective states, resident therein, who is or shall be of the age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as is herein after excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia.” Act of May 8, 1792, 1 Stat. 271. To be sure, Congress need not conscript every able-bodied man into the militia, because nothing in Article I suggests that in exercising its power to organize, discipline, and arm the militia, Congress must focus upon the entire body. Although the militia consists of all able-bodied men, the federally organized militia may consist of a subset of them."
2. Here are some statistics from 1994 when there were an estimated 192 million guns in the U.S (Source)
"The data collected by Cook and Ludwig show that 40 percent of both handguns and rifles in American households were semi-automatics"
"Today, that percentage is most likely higher, given the popularity of the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and of Glock’s handguns and others that have knocked off its design. The distribution of ammunition magazine capacity will also be different than it was 15 years ago given the growing popularity of semi-automatic rifles and of large-capacity handguns. Nearly 80 percent of ammunition magazines owned by gun owners at the time of the Cook and Ludwig survey held fewer than 10 rounds. A recent market survey of owners of semi-automatic assault rifles, what the industry is rebranding as the “Modern Sporting Rifle,” showed that 63 percent of owners of these guns had ammunition magazines that held more than 10 rounds."
If we merely extrapolate we get ~ 50 million semi-automatic rifles and ~50 million semi-automatic handguns, assuming a total gun count of 350 million, and assuming the ratio of semi-automatic/total guns sold remained the same (which is probably not true.)
Now of course this was an estimate, but it gives us a ballpark idea. The statistic you provided was of "assault-style rifles" which is an arbitrary category narrower than all semiautomatics.
