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Notes -
A definition of the Second Amendment that only limits complete bans on all firearms (and presumably only when completely banning them for all or almost all people; unless The_Nybblr's problems are enough to have you eat crow), is itself accepting a progressive frame that boils the Second Amendment down to nearly nothing.
Literally today, SCOTUS denied cert on a case prohibiting gun shows on all state land, while allowing virtually every other lawful commercial transaction. Many circuits have routinely declared that wide classes of guns, or many components of every gun, are not 'arms' protected by the Second Amendment. Dexter Taylor is still in prison, after having faced a judge who literally said "Do not bring the Second Amendment into this courtroom. It doesn’t exist here. So you can’t argue Second Amendment. This is New York". I can't tell you what the 2024 or 2023 numbers are for NYC carry permits -- the central matter in Bruen -- because the NYPD simply will "not provide the number of applications pending or licenses issued" without a lawsuit. But the last lawsuit found they were issuing fewer licenses than before Bruen. States were allowed to hold laws requiring new firearms possess technology that did not exist and might not even be possible; to ban guns that people had owned for years or decades with no compensation.
I've made this argument for literally years, and in many ways it is getting worse, not better, with SCOTUS willing to punt even on outright defiance of its decisions. If you're going to bring, as you're opening gambit, that your side has not completely destroyed the thing, and this should be considered "largely intact", you're exactly the sort of trust issue that makes it impossible to believe you're arguing in good faith.
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