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Notes -
Yeah, if you're willing to deny the premise, it's not really a dilemma at all. Compared to McGirt or Bostock or Carpenter, overturning the complete ban on machine guns just wouldn't be anywhere near the same level of pragmatic impact. Machine guns just aren't that useful, even in criminal contexts, and that's in the infinitesimal chance that someone could bring a challenge against Title 2 background-checks-and-blue-glove as a category rather than just the post-86 ban on new registrations.
The problem's far more one for the political realms -- the press doesn't care about the distinction between deaths caused by a type of firearm versus those that could only be caused by a type of firearm, Whitehouse/Schumer will absolutely throw the red paint even if it wasn't a firearm specific to a SCOTUS ruling, and as you say, enough of the court doesn't care about even far more aggressive gun bans.
It's pretty frustrating to see a SCOTUS that considers the primacy of political realms, and even more so when it only happens certain political directions! But even assuming all those things, there are ways that SCOTUS could act within those constraints. That they don't says something far worse.
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