The United States Supreme Court is expected to release an opinion on West Virginia v. Environmental Protection on Monday, June 27th. See https://www.supremecourt.gov/
The last opinions of the term should be released on Monday before the summer recess.
You can listen to the oral argument here: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2021/20-1530
The docket is here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/20-1530.html
This could be a major decision that would change the authority that the Executive Agencies have in making regulations.
Now that's unrelated, but interesting issue.
Rapid fire arms have existed since at least the 1700's (modern machine guns came into being in the late 1800s) and I don't know if there's "text, history, and tradition" of any attempt to regulate them prior to the NFA. The NFA is documented as being a response to mob violence during prohibition, which would also seem to undercut a "text, history, and tradition" defense.
The government would likely defend it as being merely a tax measure, as they did in US v. Miller. They may very likely win, but I could see the Hughes Amendment being struck down along with state laws that prohibit ownership of automatic weapons.
A possible result is that the NFA stands, but the court ends the ATF/government game-playing and essentially says "OK, sale and ownership is legal, so step out of the way and collect your tax."
What are these? (I'm not really that familiar with what the gov't thinks is a machine gun.)
I really wanted to buy an M134 minigun but after researching how much it would cost just to shoot, I doubt even removing the taxes would help me there.
It might, it would increase the number of people who own these machine guns and increase the market for the ammo. Depending on how the law would be revised of course.
I have been looking forward to this ruling for a while now.
We need this ruling to gut the existing standard of deferring to agencies called Chevron deference.
Chevron rule established courts defering to "expertise" of the bureaucracy on certain matters.
This EPA ruling has the potential to gut Chevron deference and allow a striking blow against all of the bureaucracy.
EPA, CDC, DOE and OSHA all are currently operating way out of their bounds.
They need to be limited.
The ATF as well.
The Supreme Court decided CO2 was a pollutant that could be regulated in 2007. 5-4. With Roberts no longer the swing vote thus unable to stand up for keeping wrong decisions because they were decisions, it might be overturned.