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The Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 is within living memory. The last Blue Presidential nominee laughed at the idea that the Second Amendment would protect against outright confiscation of firearms from their current owners. There are several federal bans on firearms, and not a single one has been successfully challenged at SCOTUS. The only federal gun control law that has ever been successfully challenged was the Gun Free School Zones Act, under the Commerce Clause, and which immediately was reenacted with the court pretending it was all okay. Nor is that because the statute-writers carefully wrote around the borders of the Second Amendment, or even believed it could cover anything.
If you mean to say that the Blue government have not passed a federal ban on all firearms, granted. But this does not reflect the Constitution coming out of its glass case.
They did, in fact, try. They have, in fact, tried repeatedly, both at local and federal levels. The 1938 Gun Control Act started out specifically as a complete registry of every semiautomatic, under a theory that this could make a future nation-wide Sullivan Act possible! Lujan Grisham was not stopped by a preliminary injunction (it got stayed), or a citizen grand jury (New Mexico has them in theory but defanged them against politicians) or civil suit (New Mexico's overturned qualified immunity with a but, and that butt is Grisham's face) or impeachment (nope) or federal or state censure (double nope, didn't even get a single Dem vote); she was stopped by actors holding politically-responsive offices knowing that knew they would face a serious cost at the next poll.
The only thing that has stopped several very broad gun control laws has been serious, prolonged, and coordinated political and structural force from the Red Tribe against its own politicians, well away from the courthouse.
Some of those came at massive political cost! The NRA tanked several Red Tribe politicians to protect Harry Reid, in exchange for Reid blocking gun control efforts, right before Reid infamously burned the next Red Tribe presidential nominee with malicious slander from the House floor. Even smaller stuff, like increasing efforts to curate Blue Dog Democrats and trim anti-gun Republicans, cost no small amount of political capital and literal money, and was one of many factors that lead to the ACA passing.
There is no application of the 2nd Amendment, today. There are only fancy papers talking about it.
Heller can not register (lol) his gun from Heller I, he's brought a handful of other cases that SCOTUS punted on every single one, in Heller II a goofball wrote a dissent from the appeals court case specifically calling for SCOTUS to decide on the question of 'assault' weapons bans, and yesterday the guy who wrote that dissent in Heller II put out a statement in Snope deciding nope not gonna. From the last available numbers, the NYPD have issued fewer CCW permits per-annum post-Bruen than before it, those lucky few can carry fewer places at greater legal threat, and they may not be able to carry at all anyway. Other courts have simply read Bruen's rule against banning carry across an entire island and deciding that five sounded better, and SCOTUS punted. Lower courts have simply defied SCOTUS opinions that covered other rights too, and SCOTUS punted; others outright deny that the 2nd Amendment exists in their courtroom.
I can keep doing this.
Yes, that is what I meant. The fact that they've only tried the thousand-papercuts tactic, instead of just going ahead and saying "no guns, ever", is exactly what the Constitution is buying you, and what you would lose if you tried to make it common knowledge that you can just ignore the Constitution.
You're going to need to need to circumscribe that "try" a bit more.
Gabby Giffords has never been President.
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[emphasis added]
The only person to use the President in this conversation, so far, has been me: to highlight that Kamala Harris laughed at the idea of the Second Amendment meaning anything, and to point to Harry Reid burning Romney.
EDIT: To be clear, the Harris cackle.
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