The National Firearms Act Must Go

Mike McDaniel is sitting in at the American Thinker for inestimable Andrea Widburg who is taking off for a couple weeks of well-deserved vacation. McDaniel has an essay today entitled So you want a machine-gun?. He explains the reason you cannot get a submachine gun for love or money. And it all started with the National Firearms Act of 1934.

You’ve been watching action movies for like forever, and you have some spare cash. It’s time to cowboy up and buy…wait for it…a machinegun! Except you can’t. You sort of can, but not really.

But I don’t want a belt-fed, general-purpose machinegun, you know, a rifle caliber, crew-served weapon, just a submachine gun—go here for a subgun primer--like an Uzi or MP5 or Thompson, something that shoots pistol caliber ammo, like 9mm or .45ACP.

So sad.

Until 1934, Americans could own machineguns without restriction. It was Prohibition, and the organized crime it birthed, that made criminal machine gun use newsworthy, and the 1934 National Firearms Act, enacted a year after the repeal of Prohibition by the 21st Amendment, regulated possession. It imposed a $200 non-transferrable tax, government registration, background checks (fingerprinting, photographs, etc.) and storage requirements, all of which take many months at bureaucratic speed to process. The same process is required for suppressors, and rifles or shotguns that do not meet minimum federal barrel length—at least 16” for rifles, 18” for shotguns--and overall length—at least 26” for both--minimums.

There have been attempts to liberalize the law, particularly for suppressors, but even when Republicans controlled the White House and both Houses of Congress, congressional “leaders” felt “it just wasn’t the right time.” Somehow, it never is.

After the NFA was passed in 1934, one could still obtain and possess a machine-gun if one satisfied the bureaucratic requirements and paperwork, and paid a $200 tax. Remember though that that $200 tax was the same as $5000 today. Still, you could have one if you were rich enough to afford one. But over the years, additional legislation has changed that.

Democrats/Socialists/Communists have so successfully demonized common semiautomatic rifles that provision has never been struck down. One can still own a fully automatic gun—even crew-served, belt-fed, rifle caliber guns--following the procedure established in 1934, but the 1986 amendment froze the number of such weapons in circulation.

Cool! What about my submachine gun?

The problem is virtually none are for sale, and the few that are cost whatever the market will bear, which these days means tens, even hundreds, of thousands of dollars. Submachine guns are gold mines, increasingly scarce gold mines, and they’re not selling. When their owners die, their guns will probably be lost in tragic boating accidents. Remember, only guns made before May 19, 1986 may be owned by Americans. Even individual police officers are in the same boat. Their agencies can own new subguns, and of course the military can, but not individuals. It’s a seller’s market. The law has driven up the price of newly made weapons for even governmental agencies.

So, in addition to never deciding the time is right to repeal this blatant violation of the Constitution, but then they made it worse by reducing the supply to near zero, thus increasing the cost to near infinite.

Of course, the inevitable deflection comes up: But who needs a submachine gun?. McDaniel answers the question fairly well. In the end, who needs most of the things we consider necessary to life in the 21st century. Fast cars, cell phones, indeed all the conveniences we enjoy could be deemed superfluous to our survival. Yet, none of these things is a right acknowledged and protected by our Constitution. As always, tyrants use fear to scare the public into demanding that the tyrants "do something" to save them. And the tyrants are always happy to oblige.