Would the Supreme Court strike down the federal machine-gun ban—or refuse to take the case?

Epoch Times legal reporter Sam Dorman joins Mark Walters for a candid, plain-English examination of the Third Circuit’s ruling in United States v. Berger. The court acknowledged that machine guns qualify as “arms” under the Second Amendment’s plain text, but still upheld the federal prohibition by declaring them dangerous and unusual—and not commonly used by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.

Mark and Sam examine the apparent contradiction between this decision and the Third Circuit’s recent landmark ruling against New Jersey’s bans on commonly owned semiautomatic rifles and standard-capacity magazines.

These are two very different cases involving two very different classes of firearms—but the distinctions could become critically important when the Supreme Court considers bans on AR-15-style rifles.

The conversation confronts the difficult questions directly: Would the current Supreme Court accept a machine-gun case? How might Justice Clarence Thomas approach it? Could the government rely on mass shootings to defend the ban? Would public opinion influence the Court? And is challenging the machine-gun prohibition the right constitutional battle at this moment?

Mark also exposes the circular logic behind the government’s “common use” argument. The government restricts the civilian supply, creates artificial scarcity and then points to that scarcity as evidence that machine guns are not commonly possessed.

That creates a dangerous constitutional incentive: Ban an arm early enough, prevent Americans from owning it—and then use the prohibition itself to justify keeping the ban forever.

Also covered:

• Why “dangerous AND unusual” is different from “dangerous OR unusual”
• How the Bruen history-and-tradition test applies
• Why the machine-gun ruling does not undermine the case against AR-15 bans
• The fundamental difference between semiautomatic and fully automatic firearms
• Whether machine guns have legitimate defensive applications
• Why a Supreme Court challenge would face an uphill battle
• How Caetano v. Massachusetts affects modern weapons analysis
• Why government-created scarcity weakens the “common use” argument
• First Amendment auditors and YouTube demonetization
• The connection between the First and Second Amendments
• Whether suppressors qualify as protected arms
• The Third Circuit’s treatment of suppressor registration
• Why suppressors are hearing-protection devices—not Hollywood silencers
• The enormous surge in suppressor and short-barreled-firearm transfers
• Why arbitrary barrel-length restrictions remain vulnerable
• How ownership numbers could decide the coming Supreme Court fight over semiautomatic rifle bans

According to figures discussed during the broadcast, National Firearms Act transfers reached 185,744 during August 2026—an increase of more than 200 percent compared with August 2025.

The new National Firearms Survey also estimates that approximately 25 percent of American gun owners possess an AR-15-style rifle, demonstrating why commonly owned semiautomatic firearms cannot honestly be described as “unusual.”

Machine guns may present a difficult constitutional fight. The case against bans on commonly owned semiautomatic rifles and standard-capacity magazines is another matter entirely.

The Bill of Rights protects the arms Americans possess—not merely the arms politicians and judges believe they need.

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