We have the Supreme Court to make sure things are constitutional, and for 90 yrs they have had no issues with it, but maybe you know better than them You have your opinion, and you are welcome to it. That's all there is to it. You can still buy a full-auto firearms, but you need a permit for it. Me, I don't need one. I am happy with the ones I have.
did you support the Hughes amendment-which banned private citizens from being able to buy any machine gun made after May 19, 1986 even though there was almost no cases of legally owned machine guns being misused in the 50 years before that poison pill attempt to derail the Firearms Owners Protection Act (McClure-Volker 1986) from passing?
I believe this has been thoroughly discussed. http://www.politicalforum.com/index...als-court-casts-doubt-on-constitution.612441/.
It depends what you mean by "permit". Congress has passed and enforced laws that seem pretty blatantly unconstitutional before. Usually they only get away with these when those laws do not seem too extremely unreasonable. You need to realize that the Constitution doesn't automatically enforce itself, it requires government to uphold it. Now, is there any part of the Constitution that would appropriately enable Congress to do this? Absolutely not. But if they were trying to find Constitutional justification (however flimsy it might be) they would probably look to the power to tax and regulate interstate commerce. (It can also be pointed out that, according to some arguments, the Constitution might not apply to the states the same way it applies to the federal government, but your question was specifically only about Congress)
I understand this. And the US government has failed in that regard. Interesting point. I'd be interested in hearing more on that.
It's pretty simple: the Federal constitution operates under a system of enumerated powers. If they aren't expressly given the power then they don't have it. Of course there are things they are able to do which aren't explicitly listed, necessary to carry out the powers they do have - the power to create stamps is necessary to run a post office for instance. The enumerated powers have been stretched far, far beyond any semblance of rationality or justification. As far as I can tell the Commerce Clause is now interpreted to give Congress literally any power it could possibly pursue. The anti-rats hinted at this possibility in the debates over the Bill of Rights - proposing that such a list of positive restrictions on state power would imply that they have all those powers not expressly prohibited. Maybe you should have a proper system of enumerated rights, maybe you should have a system where the state has all power not denied to it, and a robust system of protections for civil liberties - one thing I think is untenable is the current middle ground that has the benefits of neither and the drawbacks of both.
If we permit "practical realities" to override "literal interpretations of the Constitution" then whoever has to power to define "practical realties" can ignore the Constitution at will.
In other words, it's definitely a slippery slope. Once we allow a certain principle to be violated, it then has a tendency to become normalized and accepted over time, and invite further encroachments.
I kind of agree, and pretty much since day one. It's almost as if strict constitutional literalism doesn't work as a basis for the government of the nation the USA has become. If could work for a much looser federation of independent states, but that isn't the direction America has chosen. I disagree. In pretty much any area of politics (and lots of other things), it simply isn't viable to apply the principles of any one extreme. There is always balance and compromise involved, and resisting or denying that simple fact will only cause more problems. Perfection is the enemy of progress. The USA has thrived in so many ways under this compromise application of the constitution is so many areas, most of which aren't at all controversial. There are only a couple of specific areas where it is used as a political tool (like gun laws), but that would be the case in those areas regardless of the underlying system.
That's what all governments, legislative and judicial, do all the time all around the world, including in the US at federal and state level. You can't write laws which precisely describe and account for any possible situation, especially ones written so long ago, and so they always require interpretation and balance when applied in practice. That is why there are so many checks and balances within the systems to prevent exactly the kind of dictatorial rule you describe. After all, you have the same issue with determining what the "correct" literal interpretation is in the first place, as is the case with gun laws and others.
You mean checks and balances where the Executive Branch is forbidden to write laws? If "practical realities" took priority over rights, and those in power get to define those, there's no need for a Bill of Rights.
