Yes, I think the ruling will go a long way in preventing a future AWB. The need for any future AWB will have to show that there is a compelling reason for its enactment.
Might have been fantasy, but it was their fantasy.But a disarmed America was always a fantasy. Policymakers do not make a habit of pushing the constitutional lines in making gun policy. The major restraints holding them back are political, not judicial, and a revived Second Amendment won't change that.
The big change, rather, is a spiritual one. Washington has been the American jurisdiction most willing to dream of a gun-free society. For Washington, a Second Amendment that means something would end an existing experiment. It would impose a national norm on a dissenting local political culture. I'd be more sentimental about the end of that experiment if its results over three decades had been more encouraging. Still, whenever a right goes from a norm to a matter of actionable law--something the courts make sure "shall not be infringed"--it does so at some cost to popular sovereignty, a cost that Washington residents seem fated in this instance to bear.
The second step will be to prove that the 2nd amendment also protects against state and local legislation. Probably someone in Chicago will be the test case for that.
Idealists here won't agree, but this guy has it right. This isn't a constitutional/legal fight, but a political one. Has been for a long, long time. It will continue to be, regardless of the Heller decision. If you believe that some future SCOTUS will make some sweeping decision that will remove all "infringement" and return us to some ideal that never was, you are not operating in the real world. That's just the way it is.
K
user=Winchester 73
Excellent point and it goes right to the heart of the most salient feature of the Second Amendment,"shall not be infringed".
It's maddening that such clear language has to be debated at all.
But the last 75 years of Socialism(thank you so much,FDR)has brought us to such an impasse that we have to sweat out a SP Court decision for 3 months on words in the BOR that for so long were accepted on this simple principle:they mean what they say.
user=Snapping Twig
Just like the babies they are, the left sees the writing on the wall and in an effort to rise above it, they say, "it doesn't matter".
(if it didn't matter, they wouldn't be fighting)
Oh, one more thing...
If the Supremes thought machine guns were out of the scope of this ruling... then why did they bring it up?