The 1934 Supreme Court case of Miller challenged the NFA on constitutional grounds. There was nobody representing Miller’s side and the government lied, stating that there was no military use for a shotgun, much less a short barreled shotgun and since the second amendment was about a well regulated militia, no military purpose meant that the short barreled shotgun was not protected by the second amendment.

And the court so ruled. Under Miller, any “military style” or “military weapon” is a protected arm under the second amendment.

Unfortunately, the lower courts took one part of the opinion and used it to make the second amendment about collective rights. The reason we didn’t have another supreme court case until Heller was because nobody was ever given any standing to file a case.

“Banning modern sporting rifles is against the plan language of the second amendment!” “The second amendment is so that the state can have a militia. “Since there is an exception for national guard, military and law enforcement the states right is not infringed and since you are not the militia you have no standing.”

The amazing thing about Heller isn’t that we got the win, it was that the case made it to the supreme court at all.

Heller acknowledge that the second amendment was an individual right.

Since Heller the gun infringers have been scrambling to find ways around the second amendment. The current method is to use the tiered scrutiny methodology. With this, the lower courts have been able to say “Well yes, this is an infringement but it is actually constitutional because the government says they have a compelling reason for the infringement.”

Which takes us to today. We are waiting for the Supreme Court to issue its opinion on New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc v. Kevin P. Bruen as Superintendent of New York State Police.

We are expecting an opinion at any time now. It is likely that Justice Thomas will be writing the opinion. This comes from court watchers that count the number of opinions each justice writes per term. Justice Thomas hasn’t written one yet so he is likely to be the primary author.

If the opinion is not very limited in scope then it is likely to have a wide ranging effect on many court rulings and current gun rights infringements. It could easily strike down all “may issue” licensing laws. It could mark make FOID requirements unconstitutional. I pray that we get a great opinion from the court.

It looks like the gun infringers are also reading the same tea leaves the same way. The second amendment might get a huge win.

That means that they infringers need some other way to stop citizens from owning firearms.

We know the games they play and for the most part it comes down to making firearm ownership or shooting too expensive for the common man.

• A 1000% tax on all evil firearms
• A 100% tax on all ammunition.
• Require special and expensive insurance of all firearm owners
• Require expensive storage requirements
• Require registrations

All of these exist to make it more expensive to own or use a firearm. We’ve all heard of the limited number of rounds per time period. I’m sorry but 50 rounds per month isn’t enough for a single range day. I expect to put at least 100 rounds down range everytime I visit the range.

I once lived in a state where I was required to keep my firearms in one location in my home, unloaded and locked and the ammunition in another location in my home, also locked. And that state defined a loaded magazine as a loaded firearm.

In order to make a firearm ready as the animals are breaking in you would have to unlock the firearm, take it to the ammunition storage area, unlock the ammunition, load a magazine and then load and make ready. Oh, I think they also considered stripper clips with cartridges in them to be “loaded firearms”

There are no silencers from the 1930s and 1940s because nobody was going to pay a $200 tax just to have a muffler.

In the end they will use whatever tricks and cheats they need to continue to infringe. We are making progress. We are winning. But sometimes it is so painful.