All firearms laws are some variety of "Catch 22". Governments can do anything you cannot stop them from doing. It is easy to pass laws, difficult or next to impossible to get rid of them.
Strictly speaking, a
"Catch-22" is "a problematic situation for which the only solution is denied by a circumstance inherent in the problem or by a rule."
[13] For example, losing something is typically a conventional problem; to solve it, one looks for the lost item until one finds it. But if the thing lost is one's glasses, one cannot see to look for them — a Catch-22. The term "Catch-22" is also used more broadly to mean a tricky problem or a no-win or absurd situation.
The 2d Amendment says very clearly "the people" can own and carry firearms. It prohibits government, state and federal, from banning or restricting ownership and use.
Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
Catch 22 comes in when government passes laws that violate the 2d Amendment. The National Firearms Act did not ban any firearms or accessories, it merely taxed them and banned the importation. When it was challenged, in 1938, the
United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas ruled the statute unconstitutional in
United States v. Miller. The government's argument was that the short barreled shotgun was not a military-type weapon and thus not a "
militia" weapon protected by the Second Amendment, from federal infringement. The District Court agreed with Miller's argument that the shotgun was legal under the Second Amendment.
The District Court ruling was overturned on a direct appeal to the
United States Supreme Court (see
United States v. Miller). No brief was filed on behalf of the defendants, and the defendants themselves did not appear before the Supreme Court. Miller himself had been murdered one month prior to the Supreme Court's decision. No evidence that such a firearm was "ordinary military equipment" had been presented at the trial court (apparently because the case had been thrown out—at the defendants' request—before evidence could be presented), although two Supreme Court justices at the time had been
United States Army officers during
World War I and may have had personal knowledge of
the use of such weapons in combat. The Supreme Court indicated it could not take
judicial notice of such a contention.
Mostly, courts brushed off 2d Amendment challenges, and when defendants try to take 2d Amendment cases to the SCOTUS it has not accepted them, at least until 2008, when the SCOTUS decided in DC v Heller that DC's ban on handguns violated the 2d Amendment. Heller was extended to the States in McDonald V Chicago.
SCOTUS has accepted a challenge to NYC's draconian firearms, and the Left is in such a panic that some senators are threatening to pack the court if the SCOTUS does not throw out the case. One can only hope that the justices show some backbone.
