TruthTellers: you summarized so much of the situation superbly.
It's easy when it's all so obvious. The Republicans in Congress will NEVER allow an anti gun law (except maybe bump stocks) to ever pass in a body they control because that's the end of their congressional career, but once they get power they drag their feet when it comes to repealing any law, be it the NFA, GCA, or the ACA.
I'm not going to accept it anymore, I expect any Republican running to not take guns away, so seeing all these Trump rallies where he says, "I'm gonna protect your 2A rights!!!" but he never talks about supporting repealing parts of the NFA and GCA and Hughes tells me he either doesn't know anything about them or he does and doesn't want to touch them.
If somebody is going to run for office who says they'll defend 2A, then I want them to tell me why they don't support repeals of those laws. If they say you have a right to my AR, then why don't I have a right to shorten the barrel to 10 inches without having to go thru infringements of an unconstitutional tax, registering my gun with the gov't, and waiting months and months to be allowed to make my guns barrel shorter?
If it's that they think those laws are good, then they're frauds giving lip service because it's the NFA and the machine gun laws that are what future Presidents under pressure due to the latest string of mass shootings are going to use to put AR's and AK's under the NFA umbrella and Congressional Republicans, whether already in control of both houses or the next time they are, they'll get back in power saying they'll make it so semi auto guns can never legally be an NFA item solely for being a semi auto, but they'll never get it passed. Romney will walk out and give a thumbs down just like McCain did and AR's, Glocks, etc. will be on the NFA forever.
If Republican Congressman think altering the NFA, GCA, and Hughes are losing topics then clearly it's a topic worth debating because in general I do not think the average American cares about barrel lengths for rifles/shotguns being an issue. They're smart enough to know that a gun of any barrel length is deadly, so what's the deal? Same for the sporting purposes clause. The idea of that in 68 was cut off supply of cheap guns because we didn't have background check systems like we do now. Besides, all that did was lead to companies like Raven, Jennings, etc. making their own cheap guns here in the US.
If the reason the Republicans don't want to push it is because they feel that SCOTUS is the most effective branch to deal with making changes to those laws, then why is it that none of them ask the justices nominated by a Republican president what their opinion is on the NFA, GCA, and Hughes?
It's all very simple stuff because the Bill of Rights is itself very simple. If people want to restrict certain weapons from being owned the way to do it is thru amending the Constitution. It would take much more than a simple majority to do it and if say the 28th Amendment outright banned civilian ownership of machine guns, at least it would take 2/3 of Congress and 3/4 states to approve that, thus showing a clear and overwhelming majority are in agreement.
What it comes down to is neither side is all that good for us. We always get stuck choosing the lesser of all evils.