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Notes -
In fairness, look at what some of our doomposters here believe: that the Democrats literally ignore laws with impunity because they are in control, so the Constitution is fake and gay and any claims that they can't do X or Y or Z are just cope.
It's not hard to believe that rabid partisans on the other side like Marcotte believe that Republicans can and will just ignore laws and everyone will go along with it because.
It's maybe a nitpick, maybe not - but there is a difference between ignorning laws and actually changing them in what would be plainly against the individual freedom concepts embedded in the constitution.
Ignoring or selectively enforcing laws (or, on another level, choosing to interpret laws in a certain way) is commonplace no matter who holds power in the executive branch. Congress and The President get to fight it out. The backstop to that has always been individual liberties - specifically those laid out in the constitution and, otherwise, those with deep precedent.
There is room for legitimate doomerism on both sides, but there is also, in my opinion, a difference between unlikely and fanciful. To take a Red Tribe issue of note; the idea that the Federal government could ever confiscate already owned guns is fantasy. The idea that they could make everyone register their guns or be subject to search is far fetched but plausible.
Marcotte and her ilk start with the fanciful and ridiculous as "legitimate concern" territory and then use a logical structure full of gaps and deeply nested assumptions to get there. It's a bad in product and process.
Can I be skeptical that this is so far fetched? Unlikely, sure, but all it would take is a 5-4 SCOTUS decision to claim the 2A does not confer an individual right to own guns. Right now, with the current SCOTUS lineup that won't happen, but give it a generation or two, some unlucky deaths/retirements, or court packing and we could quickly be there.
It may be bias on my end, but I also feel the more conservative members of SCOTUS who are textualists (and to a lesser extent originalists) are less partisan and more consistent with their rulings on the whole than the more liberal side whose motivating principle seems to be more about how they think society should be.
No, they can't. The federal government might be able to declare that they have the right to do such a thing but actually going and doing it is another matter, like deporting twenty million illegals. It's just not doable.
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