I've been thinking about this the past few days but I can't come up with an answer.
The founding fathers explicitly created the constitution and first set of amendments guaranteeing Americans specific rights that would not and could not be limited or revoked without first passing an additional amendment to the constitution.
How then, can the Federal and State governments limit or restrict something such as gun ownership without passing a constitutional amendment? Isn't banning any type of firearm, automatic or otherwise by definition unconstitutional? In addition, why didn't the constitution provide legal clemency for citizens using their second amendment rights to push back against a tyrannical government? Year after year we see armed protests in the United States and the overwhelming opinion is "They won't do shit" - but why would they when legally they would get absolutely destroyed by the federal government? Exercising your second amendment rights in practice today is essentially useless unless you can overthrow the government entirely lest you end up as another Waco or Ruby Ridge. The question becomes, when is the appropriate time to utilize the second amendment - is it when the federal government bans automatic weapons? Is it when they ban semi-automatic rifles? Handguns? Where is the line that should not be crossed?
Having an armed populace alone is enough to keep the government at least a little bit in check. I would argue some of the measures we've seen in the UK and Australia, for example, would not be tolerated in the US as a whole. If Canada goes ahead with trying to confiscate semi-autos, that will be interesting to watch.
There's a reason why there are a lot of 2A court cases lined up
Ayden Wilson
Because it's hard to get the Supreme Court of the United States of America to hear cases like this. We can even get a ruling on FOID cards being totally unconstitutional because no other states have a similar system
