Comment Re:Assault weapon bans are just propaganda (Score 2) 934
Actually what happened is that in 1986 Congress closed the machine gun registry with the Hughes Amendment to the Firearm Owners Protection Act.
It was supposed to be a poison pill to defeat FOPA but the NRA supported the bill anyway (FOPA was full of good stuff otherwise) and said they'd challenge the Hughes Amendment later on constitutional grounds since assault rifles and submachine guns can be considered militia weaponry and therefore protected by the 2nd Amendment as the Supreme Court has come to understand it, however that never happened and to this day Congress continues to infringe the 2nd Amendment by keeping the registry closed, no one has been able to get the Hughes Amendment before the Supreme Court and no senator would be caught dead introducing a bill to re-open the machine gun registry.
Most gun owners I've talked to though would rather see a bigger focus on the repeal of portions of the National Firearm Act though like deregulating; short-barrel rifles, shotguns, handgun grips and evil safety devices like suppressors.
Even more gun owners would like the BATFE to have more transparency and Congressional oversight because of their arbitrary and non-nonsensical decisions and fortunately Operation Fast'n'Furious exposed their tom foolery to the general public but I doubt anything will come of it.