Live to Shoot - Defending our 2nd Amendment Rights

Are Machine Guns Now Legal?

Jeff Dowdle Episode 216

Well, welcome to the Live to Shoot podcast. My name is Jeff Dowell and I've been a licensed firearm dealer for the last 17 years. In this podcast, we talk about all things related to the second amendment, as well as anything else going on in the world, or any sports story that's interesting, or anything else in my life that I might want to talk about. So welcome, welcome, welcome. So are machine guns legal? Well, they have been, they always have been under certain circumstances. So that is also a myth that we have. that the mainstream media will always propose out there, but we'll, we'll talk about that later. But what is interesting is in the case that what just came down last week out of the Kansas District Court U. S. v. Morgan the, District Judge ruled essentially that the Hughes Amendment was unconstitutional. And what is the Hughes Amendment? The Hughes Amendment was an amendment to the 1986 Firearms Protection Act. And basically what it said was up until 1986 you could possess any fully auto machine gun as long as it had been registered. There was a period of time that people were, um, grandfathered, that they were given a period to register their firearms, and this was in the 60s that they had, and then as long as that firearm had been registered and had, you had gone on and, and continued to keep it registered, you could continue to possess that firearm. In 1986, the Hughes Amendment kind of drew a line and said that that's no longer the case. Basically anything from 1986 going forward could not be owned by private citizens. It was only allowed for military or law enforcement. But you can still own, legally, a machine gun. Prior to 1986, as long as it's previously been registered, and you go through all the transfer process. That's the case today. So when people talk about how, you know, people can't own machine guns. Yes, they can. In fact, there's 750, 000 of them out there right now, today. But the Hughes Amendment said anything going forward. Well, this Tister judge said, ah, maybe not so. But this case was really very specific to the plaintiff who owned a modern machine gun and a Glock switch. And this was kind of what they call an applied challenge. And I don't want, I'm not a lawyer. Anything, but it only applied to really this specific case and what happened was, so the judge went through a Bruin analysis and that's from the Bruin case and basically it said, you know, one, the first test is our machine guns arms and that's protected by the second amendment. And yes, they are arms and they are protected by the Second Amendment. And then the next thing is, is, are there cases historically and of tradition similar to this? Law or amendment historically that that that we can look to, to test, you know, is this amendment constitutional? And so the government, try as they may. You know, you want to first, you know, our machine guns unusual and unsafe and no we've, they've been a part of history and so that you know, like I said, up until the people have them now, there's 750, 000 of them. They are not unusual. They're very quite common, right? And so it doesn't pass that test. So when you look at, you know, were their traditions in the past. And they went back all the way to 1328 in English, England statute to make their case that, you know, that they were outlawed then. Now, first off, that's a long way to go to pretty sure in when we uh, had our revolution and that we kind of But to rest, any English laws that, to apply to us, and I think the 1791 Second Amendment was probably in response to things like this 1328 statute. But, needless to say, the government didn't prove their case. They could not come up with any laws of historical or of tradition to say that yes, this law is constitutional. Now the judge in his ruling did say, basically, y'all didn't try very hard, they kind of mailed it in. So, are post 1986 machine guns currently legal? No. Don't go out to H& K's website and order your MP5. At this point in time, but it is a very positive ruling and it is a sign of things that can still come as a result of this Bruin decision. You know, when you look historically, they talk about them being unusual and the other thing about media will talk about that we aren't supposed to be able to possess weapons of war. Well, if you go back to history and the quote unquote militia, there are laws that were in place at the time for members of the militia, which were private citizens. There was no standing armies at the time. Okay. So when you talk about militia, you're not talking about an army that is funded by the government. You're talking about individual citizens and these individual citizens by law were required to. Okay. firearms to be prepared for the militia, and they had to be modern weapons of war that they can use in battle. So they were required by law to own weapons of war. And whenever you see a fully a regulated militia, regulated doesn't mean we're going to apply laws to it. At the time it meant a prepared and organized and to be regulated at that time you had to be prepared and to be prepared you had to own your firearms and they had to be modern and they had to be effective and that you had to be ready to go to war with them. Thus they were modern weapons of war that were available to the citizens at that time. And so if you look at that our forefathers intended for us as citizens to be able to possess modern weapons of war. And that can be argued that it's a fully automated H and K MP5. So when you start looking at what the Bruin decision did, there's a lot of power in it and we're going to be able to utilize it. And things are going to be probably changing, especially if we can get a new administration. And that's why we come back to the main point of this podcast. We have to beat the Democrats. We have to Not allow Kamala Harris to be elected, so you've got to go out and vote, get your friends to vote. We've got to fight, fight, fight, do all those things that I continue to preach in this, because all of our rights are at risk with this administration. They will confiscate our guns. That is true in case, but this case is going to have to go to appeals. He may make his way all the way up to the second, to the Supreme Court. But we will see where it goes. And it's very interesting to see that yes, the Bruin decision is going to have an impact on the way people look at firearms regulation going forward. So have a great Labor Day weekend. And we will talk to you.

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