Thomas and Scalia might, or good libertarian grounds, resist the exercise of federal authority but would still have to find in the Militia Act of 1792, as an expression of the true meaning and understanding of the Second Amendment, justification for a national registration scheme. The judicial mechanism for upholding the constitutionality of federal firearms regulations up until now has been the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. The real issue in regulating firearms is not commerce, although the effect of gun violence on commerce is certainly important, but the supremacy of law and the sovereignty of the legal institutions of government to maintain the supremacy of law and the rule of law. When sovereign individuals any more than sovereign states make a treaty they create no higher law. The Framers of the Constitution worried about both tyranny and anarchy.
Constitutional government is somewhere in between.
If the confiscationist designs of the gun controllers represent tyranny then the insurrectionist designs of many gun rights advocates have to represent anarchy. The fear of confiscation is political cynicism. The right to insurrection is childish political fantasy which this government has no business indulging. The cynicism has to be appropriately addressed in the political arena and worked out as policy in the legislative process not in the courts. Stud. , 1983.