Heller's lawyers, and they are the same lawyers handling the Chicago cases, purposely declined to challenge the licensing. They purposely asked the court to find that there is an individual, FUNDAMENTAL, right to keep and bear a handgun for self-defense and other purposes in the home.
The pro-gun side purposely wanted to keep other issues off the table, no doubt to avoid the kind of reasoning which states, "If the government can ban machineguns, then they can ban any gun, and thus they can ban Heller from having his gun in his home".
Instead, the Court was forced to address the meaning of the Second Amendment with sufficient depth to SETTLE the one question before the Court.
Canada has already spent BILLIONS on their gun registry, with nothing to show for it. Gun licensing and gun owner licensing is a losing proposition and will fall dramatically just as soon as the courts dictate that the cost of licensing must be borne by the state.
Utah is experiencing financial stress because they set the fee for renewal of a CCW at $10 and it doesn't cover the cost. People like me, living in the People's Republik of Kalifornia, jump through Utah's hoops so that we can carry in the thirty-five or so states which recognize Utah's permit. As a result, Utah's burden of out-of-state permits numbers in the range of a hundred thousand or more.
Similarly, Florida has an immense backlog of renewals to process for similar reasons.
If Kalifornia had to start paying the costs of their registration and enforcement system, the whole thing would probably collapse in today's economic environment.
Once it has been decided that a law-abiding person can carry a loaded, concealed gun in public with a state-funded "license" and that the gun can be a military-pattern, center-fire, magazine-fed rifle using normal-capacity magazines, THEN it will be time to challenge NFA 34. This needs to be practically the LAST issue addressed, not the first.
It is very important that the public be able to say at each step, "What's the big deal?" The Supreme Court had to deal with "What's the big deal about having a handgun in one's home?" The anti-gunners lost big time and don't even know it.
Next it will be, "What's the big deal about people in Chicago having the same rights as people in DC?" Then it will be, "What's the big deal about presumption of skill at arms when it comes to owning or carrying a handgun?" (States which require training see no advantage in the statistics of shootings or accidents.)
We got into the mess we did through incremental loss of rights. We will have to expect to get out of the mess in the same incremental way.
How do you expect the government, when the time comes, to justify denying people the right to possess and carry machineguns when virtually every politician of any note is protected by guards carrying exactly those arms?
I'm aware of Gura's strategy and the tactics. I'll leave it at that.