Any Government That Doesn't Trust You With a Gun Should Not Be Trusted

 Long time gentle readers will know that I have occasionally tendered the notion that the National Firearms Act, or at least parts of it, are Unconstitutional.  Now, I am no expert on the Constitution. I am not even a lawyer, so I have only a layman's understanding of it.  But I am not, apparently, the only one.  Ted Noel at the American Thinker has an article today at that caught my eye entitled While SCOTUS is at it, The National Firearms Act is Largely Unconstitutional. The National Firearms Act (NFA) was passed in the 1930s, during a time when Prohibition had empowered the mafia, of which Al Capone was the most notorious. At a time when the police were usually armed with .38 revovlers, hunting rifles and shotguns, the Thompson machine gun seemed to out gun the police of the era.

During Prohibition, Al Capone’s Chicago gang made the Thompson submachine gun a symbol of gang violence. The “Chicago Typewriter” could empty a hundred-round drum magazine in under ten seconds, and make headlines, while occasionally perforating both targets and bystanders.

Congress saw an opportunity to “do something,” and “wasn’t willing to let a ‘crisis’ go to waste.” The ultimate result is the National Firearms Act of 1934 (“NFA”), which was later amended by the Gun Control Act of 1968 (“GCA”). The net result is that certain firearms and firearm-related items have seriously disfavored status, completely unrelated to anything having to do with crime or Constitution.

The NFA states that for certain items such as machine guns and suppressors, the purchaser must pay a $200 tax and then wait for extended periods for the federal government to decide that it’s okay for him to have the item. But the Supreme Court said in Bruen that “lengthy wait times in processing license applications or exorbitant fees deny ordinary citizens their right to public carry.”

Just so. Years ago, many states in the Jim Crow south had what were called "poll taxes" that were meant to keep blacks from voting. The Supreme Court finally struck down the last of these poll taxes in 1966 in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections. A Constitutional right can not be burdened with a tax, thus the $200 tax part of the NFA should be struck down on much the same principle. As for the wait times:

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (“BATFE”) routinely violates this idea with wait times of a year or more before issuing permits. Granted, they’re purchase authorizations, not carry permits, but the same idea applies. When you have a constitutional right to a weapon or suppressor, all other considerations require extremely careful examination.

You can read about Noel's experience getting a supressor, which is another NFA item, in excruciating detail. This shouldn't happen in the United States.

Then there is the fact that the whole thing is quite arbitrary, and to make matters worse, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) acts with breathtaking arbitrariness and capriciousness. This is not how bureaucrats should operate. They are public servants after all, and should act scupulously within the law.  To make matters worse, the ATF is notorious for being against the civilian ownership of guns, doing everything legal, and some that are not legal, to restrict as much as possible gun ownership.

And that may be the best reason to strike down the NFA.  The ATF shown itself to be extremely anti-gun for civilians. Not their own guns of course, but yours and mine. Any government or government agency that does not trust us to have guns should not itself be trusted.