FOR more than 80 years, the United States has enforced a tough and effective gun control law that most Americans have never heard of. It’s a 1934 measure called the National Firearms Act, and it stands as a stark rebuke to the most sacred precepts of the gun lobby and provides a model we should build on.
Leaders of the National Rifle Association rarely talk about the firearms act, and that’s probably because it imposes precisely the kinds of practical — and constitutional — limits on gun ownership, such as registration and background checks, that the N.R.A. regularly insists will lead to the demise of the Second Amendment.
Source: Gun Control That Actually Works – The New York Times
No doubt NFA covers most if not all the goodies the Opposition wants. O course the author has no idea about how many unregistered machine guns, dating back to WWI are out there or that the greatest abuses of power by the ATF during the 90s were targeted against those with registered NFA weapons or “suspected” to be violating NFA rules and ended up with the BBQ over at the Branch Davidians in Waco.
N.F.A.-classified weapons do show up at crime scenes. But nearly all of them were unregistered, so the simple act of possession was a crime.
It seems that the author’s cognitive dissonance kicked to high gear: NFA rules are the solution to the Gun Crime yet crimes under NFA rules still happen. Unregistered guns also have laws such as possession of any firearm by a felon, yet is still being broken. So is homicide, assault with a deadly weapon, etc.
And do not get me started with the NFA records itself with missing or destroyed entries making it unreliable at best.
I am sure there are plenty more reason to avoid NFA Rules and the readers with experience in this matters are invited to illustrate us in thge comments.
“Leaders of the National Rifle Association rarely talk about the firearms act, and that’s probably because it imposes precisely the kinds of practical — and constitutional — limits on gun ownership, such as registration and background checks, that the N.R.A. regularly insists will lead to the demise of the Second Amendment.”
So…are they saying that the NFA laws have NOT severely restricted ownership of those weapons to the point where practically nobody has them? Because that’s exactly what they’ve done…very few people own NFA weapons because of all those laws…so yes, instituting them across gun ownership would lead to the demise of the 2nd amendment.
The NFA restricts ownership of certain items by virtue of the paperwork and $200 tax. The Hughes Amendment further restricted machine guns by banning ownership of MGs made after May 19th 1986 by civilians, which drove the price up of pre-86 MGs to the point where few can afford to own them.
What the author suggests is gun control by taxation and bureaucracy. Make the hurdles to legal gun ownership so onerous, most people will give up and not bother with going through the hoops.
However, even people with no ill intent sometimes need a gun, and thus they’ll go through extralegal channels to acquire one.
http://reason.com/archives/2012/12/22/gun-restrictions-have-always-bred-defian/print
“So I applied for a permit to purchase a .45-caliber Model 1911 and keep it at home.
The sales clerk at the gun shop was helpful—he should have been. I paid a premium to have my paperwork submitted to the proper city paper-pushers by experts retained by the store. Although the term was never used, I assumed that meant the store made use of New York City’s peculiar breed of middlemen known as “expediters” to get the permit processed. Eternally controversial, expediters are known for their detailed knowledge of the city’s byzantine regulatory procedures, their working relationships with bureaucrats, and their willingness to grease palms to make sure clients are given favorable consideration.
Even so, I waited. And I waited. And I finally blew my stack.
As the saying goes, I knew a guy who knew a guy. It took an email, a phone call, and a friendly meeting, and for less than 300 bucks, I was the proud owner of a semi-automatic variant of an AK-47—the famed assault rifle of the old Soviet bloc and of guerrilla fighters everywhere. It was legal in much of the United States, but strictly verboten in New York City.”
Also worth noting is the registration percentages in Europe. Noncompliance is rampant.
Luckily for Tuccille, he got out of NY and can legally own all the firepower his wallet can afford in AZ.
If the graboids _like_ the NFA suddenly…
(I’m shocked they’re AWARE of it, most are pathetically clueless serfs just parroting whatever #GunSense nonsense they’ve been fed)
Sorry. Back on track. If the gun-grabbing statist idiots suddenly _admire_ the NFA we therefore need to organize a concerted push to start whittling away at it. Start with suppressors, then SBS/SBR/AOW, then burst fire.
We present suppressors as the safety devices they _actually_are_
We present odd size guns as ADA friendly
We move to burst/continous fire after that, because we’ll have won, and because “screw you, that’s why” will be sufficient reason to overcome the wailing of DiFi, Laddy boy, Shan, Bloombucks, & the rest of the statist scum.
I’m a believer in the incremental push as well. That’s how we lost our rights in the first place. Bit by bit.
The Hearing Protection Act is/was a great start, however, I would have modified it a bit. As it is written, the HPA would make suppressors into Title I (NICS check and take it home the same day) weapons and nullify the $200 tax, obviously removing suppressors from the NFA. I would have left the tax in place, temporarily, though.
Why? The government isn’t going to leave money on the table. People are used to paying the tax, and the government would fight to keep it, i.e. shooting down the HPA entirely. I would have given them the tax, and just gotten cans off of the NFA. Have the tax collected as a “sales tax” and FFLs would need to kick the tax up to the ATF every quarter.
Then later on campaign to amend the law to repeal the tax.
Same thing when approaching SBRs & SBSes.
I like the incremental push as well. The ATF has already done some of the heavy lifting by eliminating CLEO signoff. Now they need to actually get the wait times down to like a month, which is what is seen with CCW license issuances. They also need to get rid of the stupid “inform the ATF every time you move anywhere with your NFA item” – way too cumbersome, and if they think that registration already does the job of making people “responsible” (in their BS speak) then they can afford to transfer some staff from the “inform the ATF of your every move” to the “background check division” to cut down on wait times.
Don’t forget SCOTUS ruled that felons need not register NFA items as that would violate their 5th Amendment Right of self incrimination. I’ve seen a few articles on criminals caught with “unregistered” machine guns and suppressors (silencers to the Feds).
See Haynes v. United States
en wikipedia org/wiki/Haynes_v._United_States