Read some speculation on reddit (I think it was) that if this becomes common enough, it could be used to strike down the whole silencers being NFA items because "common use". Thoughts on this?
Under Heller... maybe. Although that verbiage/dicta from the court and the majority decision and Scalia's writings are probably aimed at maintaining the status quo-while still affirming the "individual right" in the 2A. A roundabout way of trying to imply that outright bans on semi-autos were unconstitutional under the decision since semi-autos are obviously in very "common use". And both the court and Alan Gura made pains to see that NFA was not addressed in Heller either way. The negative talk about full-auto that got a lot of RKBA absolutists butthurt wasn't really against full-auto, but about keeping it out of the scope of Heller. And that judicial restraint (yes, only ever seems to be in play when it's against us...) would require a separate case for that.
Although one could try and argue that because of NFA restrictions, NFA items are not in "common use" as compared to Title I firearms. Although any American judge or court, no matter where they fall on how they feel about RKBA should reject such circular logic out of hand as insulting, and something worthy of only a freshman law student with little aptitude to offer as an argument. Even if the Judge or judges were anti's, they'd almost certainly offer up their own reasoning in the decision, rather than use something as embarrassing as that.
And of course, more simply, even with NFA restrictions, suppressor use has taken off in the past decade, and one can argue that with thousands, maybe millions of NFA registered tax-paid suppressors now in use/ownership, they're "common" now. "Common" being a pretty arbitrary and subjective metric.
However, under Miller, the test was "bearing some resemblance to a well-regulated (well-regulated as in equipped, functional, not "controlled" or "supervised") militia" etc. Since the TOE of the US Army didn't include any SBS's at the time, besides Miller also being dead when the case reached SCOTUS, no arguments to that effect (or any on Miller's behalf) were made, the NFA was upheld. Although it was really just the quickest end-run the majority justices found to get rid of what was otherwise a tar-baby case. And during a time when "gun culture" was more widely spread and just "American culture" at the time. The idea that anyone was pulling for complete disarmament of the American people, or that such an idea or movement needed to be opposed probably didn't crystallize as a front in the larger culture war until the events leading up to the 1968 GCA.
Although some of the anti's certainly saw it that way back then... Besides the criminals sometimes having them, SBR's SBS's and AOW's were originally put in the NFA, because all handguns were to be NFA too in the original draft, and those categories were to close "loopholes" people might use to try and obtain substitutes for handguns. When it was realized that was too extreme to ever allow passage, it was removed.
Of course, now, SBS's, SBR's, suppressors, MG's and DD's and AOW's ALL have a great deal of utility for the people to maintain or form a well-regulated militia and one can point out active or standing-military equivalents for almost all of them. But nobody's gotten before the SCOTUS to try and argue it. Or if the SCOTUS is going to be amenable to hearing Miller used as precedent.
