As of today, those arms are regulated, not banned. Second, they're only regulated for civilians with no connection to a Militia. Third, today, the second amendment protects those arms from ANY infringement by the federal government for Militia members.
Under Heller, they may be banned (Gura's words) completely, for everyone, since they have no second amendment protection.
You call that "nothing lost"? Tell me. What would constitutionally prevent the federal government, under Heller, from calling for all privately owned machine guns to be sent to the federal government to be melted down? Compensation will be provided at 2X current market value. Failure to comply is a mandatory 10 year prison sentence (if caught).
And a ban on the manufacture of books would not be a book ban? Why do you persist in a claim which is so demonstrably false? Permitting only a limited number of machineguns in civilian hands is a ban on having any number greater than that.
If the government reduced the number of machine guns allowed to ONE, would that be a ban?
The difficulties you are pointing out are ALL related to the fact that the Miller Court made an erroneous decision.
The solution is to dump that decision, not to hold future parties to the Court responsible for having to frame their arguments in terms of that decision.
Even justices on the Heller Court have suggested that Miller is deficient.
You are correct; if the Heller Court wants to outlaw machine guns from the Militia, they have a way to do it. They could also prohibit robertpaulsen from posting on FR.
But the Supreme Court is bound by the Constitution to do neither.
I have asked you before to tell us what the Heller Court SHOULD DECIDE. I don't think you have a clue what they should decide because you have no coherent theory of human rights and Constitutional limits that would make sense given what the Second Amendment actually says.
Is there some chance that the Heller Court will rule that a state militia cannot arm itself as the state sees fit?
I have never seen a word of yours written to indicate that anything else is of concern to you.
What would prevent that today?
Kalifornia claims the power to confiscate unregistered "assault weapons". What prevents Congress TODAY from cancelling the registrations of all machine guns and oredering their surrender?