Possible? Of course. Anything is possible.

Likely? Anything but.

The big defense players like FN or Colt would not participate.  Without military and government sales they would have no bottom line.  And forget about Glock participating.  Ruger will sell you out in  a heartbeat.  S&W might have learned not to sup with the Devil from their experiences a few years back, but I wouldn't count on it.

The only way the big boys won't play is if they mandate microstamping, like Cali did. SiG, Glock, and Smith ALL told Cali that they would pull out of the entire Cali market if they passed that law, which they did. CZ has said they will pull out of Cali, too, too expensive to do the stamping garbage.
If the dyed in the wool sheeple LIEberals craft the law, like Cali, there will be no loophole for LE and mililtary, (AND THERE SHOULDN'T BE!), then you can see some major players going more forthe international market. If the intelligent gun banner/socialsts craft the law with a loophole, then they may stay in the game.

Plus, FN and Colt are contractually obligated to make weapons for the military.  Refusing to do so (in a time of war, no less) would be a series of lawsuits (that they wouldn't win) waiting to happen.

Now, I think it's possible (in some states, at least) to get a state exemption to a Federal ban.  I mean, let's say Montana passes a law that says it's not going to enforce a Federal AW ban, and that said "assault weapons" are legal for sale in Montana, but only to Montana residents.  The feds would stop and huff and threaten to pull their highway money, but that's about it.  Why not?  California and other states get away with "Sanctuary Cities" and decriminalized marijuana, among other things, regardless of what Washington wants.

The sad thing about a federal AW ban is that a lot of gun companies that don't have big government contracts will go under.  I mean, Springfield Armory will probably still be able to market the M1A.  My favorite gun company, DSA, offers a California-legal, stripper-clip fed FAL.  But there isn't any neutering an AR-15, unless you want to crack the weapon open to recharge the fixed magazine.  A lot of smaller AR-15 manufactuers will go out of business in a hurry, most likely.

If and when another ban gets passed, the worst thing we can do, as gun owners, is roll over and give up.  We have the Heller decision; the NRA could challege it in court.  Congress swings back and forth, left-to-right, over the decades.  The harder it swings in one direction, the harder it usually swings back. (The turmoil of the 1960s and national clinical depression of the 1970s gave us the Regan Era, for instance.)  It's tough, and rare, but Federal laws can be repealed.  States can pass their own laws.

Worse comes to worse, the Garand is still one hell of a good fighting rifle.  But let's not bemoan our fate and throw in the sponge before we even get there.  It's like a lot of people thought, in 2004, with Bush getting re-elected, the Republicans retaining Congress, and the 1994 ban expiring, that the RKBA fight was over or something.

It's never over, folks.  Freedom isn't free, as they say.

Um, the ATF was founded in 1972.  BRILLIANT!

Its morphing into the "ATF" was a direct result of the passage of the Gun Contol Act of 1968.  Congress used the Interstate Commerce Clause to justify it (as they do with almost everything).

How hard did we, as gun owners, hammer Congress during the last eight years for positive change for gun owners?

How many went to sleep and didn't worry about it, because "our side" was in charge?

Gun ownership isn't a left-right issue.  Not really.  That's why the swinging pendulum never really works out that well for us.  There are plenty of Republicans that'd be on board with a gun ban, and plenty more that'd be on board if they thought it'd get them re-elected.

Gun ownership is a civil rights issue and we need to treat it as such.  Pity we can't seem to get organized like the civil rights movement did.  Everytime there's a Republican in charge, half of gun owners stop paying attention.  The other half never pay attention in the first place, because "they'll never come for my hunting rifle".  Feh.  We're our own worst enemy sometimes.

It's not right.  It's not fair.  But it is what it is.

As for concealed carry...I have a friend that would've been raped and murdered had she not been carrying a gun.  I'm gonna have to go ahead and call that one a win, even if she needed to get a state-issued permit first.

But since you mention Vermont...the fact that a place like Vermont, that elected a genuine, self-described Socialist to the Senate, has "Vermont Carry" (and that it hasn't been legislated away) should give us pause.  This is the sort of thing that can be accomplished at the state and local level.  Alaska adopted no-permit carry.  With enough time and effort, other States might be able to also.

Things don't look good.  I didn't mean imply that they did.  The whole world's going insane, and God only knows where we'll end up.  Still, we have two options: keep fighting or give up.

The Reagan administration gave us the machine gun ban

Not exactly.  The "machinegun ban" resulted from the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA).  NFA did not expressly ban automatic weapons but it did impose a punitive tax of $200 (this was during the Great Depression!) and require that the weapons be registered with a tax stamp.

The Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986 did several things.  Among others it established a "traveling clause" that exempted citizens from local gun ordinances if they were simply passing through.  Let's say your flight got diverted to Chicago and you had a rifle in checked baggage.  Prior to FOPA '86 you could be prosecuted for having an unregistered weapon in Chicago.

What got amended to the FOPA '86 at the last minute was a freeze on adding new automatic weapons to the NFA registry.  This effectively froze the supply at whatever was transferable as of 1986.  That's the main reason that a fully automatic weapon is likely to set you back thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars to lawfully purchase it.  Now, criminals will not pay anywhere near that amount but let's not let reality get in the law of intentions.

Kimber is in New York.
DS Arms is in Illinois.
Springfield is in Illinois.
Detonics is in Illinois.
Rock River Arms is in Illinois.
Smith&Wesson is in Massachussets.

Who else am I missing?  And let me know if I'm correct, I'm going by there 'Contact' mailing address.

DPMS(MN), Bushmaster(ME), Colt(CT), Ruger(NH?),

I say Colt jokingly of course.  Colt has been trying for years to become a Government dealer only. Besides, a lot of gun companies offer a far better product than Colt now anyways.


Why are most gun makers located in deep anti-gun territory?

The old, established firearms factories are in the Northeast because the entrepreneurs who set them up were, for the most part, Yankees, and back then the only places in the South with the infrastructure to support factories were Richmond, Baltimore and maybe Vicksburg. But mainly they weren't interested in the first place. The South was an agrarian society with an agricultural economy based on slave labor. Building factories wasn't part of the plan. That's why, when the War of the Rebellion began in 1861, there were more factories in the State of New York alone than in the entire South.

  This won't happen.  They will do what they can to maintain their existence.