"or even earlier when considering the NFA) where was the NRA then?"
The NRA was supporting NFA, my friend. I proved that by use of their own words some time ago:
A bunch of NRA apologists of Mike Haas' ilk attacked me -- for telling the plain truth. Go figure.
The next report will drive it home even further, using scanned copies of official documents from Congressional Testimony, as found in the Library of Congress by the author of the Silveira certiorari petition.
Keep asking good questions, El Gato. You're head and shoulders above the blind following sheep.
That they did... However they had a good, if misguided, reason for doing so. They supported the restrictions on machine guns in exhange for the removal from the law, on the same sorts of restrictions on *handguns*. If they hadn't gotten that concession, there'd be no IPSC, no CAS, no PPC, nada, zip, no formal handgun competion. Sure people could afford the $200 tax on a $1000 pistol (but probably not on a $200 .22 pistol, and most especially not on a $100 "Saturday Night Special", aka an affordable self defense tool). However, handguns would be as demonized as machine guns are now. Chances are they'd have been banned for thee and me about the same time new production machine guns were.
While their reason is understandable, IMHO it was a mistake then, and similar "compromises" which gain nothing, but merely lose less than would have otherwise been lost, are not a viable long term tactic. In the end, we still lose.
OTOH, if they'd banned/restricted handguns in '34, they might very well have made it "Time" then or in '39, just as loss of this case coupled with renewal of the AW ban, most especially if it's the "new improved" and much more restrictive version, it may yet become "Time" in the near future.
Kates, Kopel, et. al. are correct in that the risk of the Silveira case is that if we lose, and the chances are fair that we might, it will open the floodgates for new and more restrictive legislation.
Still it would have been nice if the NRA had supported poor old "Miller" back in the late '30s, and at least submitted an Amicus brief, so that the government's side would not be the only side "heard" by the Court. At least this time they've done that much, although I've not read it. Does anyone have links to the various Amicus briefs in the case?