A Brief History of Federal Gun Control, Part 1

The National Firearms Act of 1934

Prior to 1934, the federal government stayed out of the states way when it came to the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Some states and cities passed laws requiring permits to carry a firearm, many of these laws were intended to keep Blacks and other minorities from carrying a firearm. Not very many whites were ever arrested for violating these "Jim Crow" type laws. A good article on gun control laws and racism can be found at CORAD.

Many people in the United States legally owned Machine Guns. They were relatively inexpensive and could be purchase in hardware stores, gun stores and through mail order. Quite a few WWI veterans brought home "souvenirs" of their time in the military. These souvenirs included machine guns, trench guns and fire arms of all sorts. There was also no age limit on firearm purchases. Most of the youth grew up with and around firearms, they were tools.

Then along comes prohibition. Prohibition caused the rise of the famous gangsters of the day, Al Capone and those who wanted to be Al Capone trafficked in illegal booze. They built up territories and violently defended those territories from other gangsters and from Treasury Agents that could not be bought off.

As a reaction to the violence of organized crime, the National Firearms Actwas passed. The National Firearms Act (NFA)is a part of the Internal Revenue Code, it is a tax act. The NFA was not meant to prohibit ownership of certain firearms and accessories, just to discourage it.

What the act covered:

1. Machine guns.

2. Silencers (suppressors).

3. Shotguns with an overall length of less than 26" or a barrel length of less than 18".

4. Rifles with an overall length of less than 26" or a barrel length of less than 16".

5. Any Other weapons: I have to just paste this from the act because it is hard to explain. "The term "any other weapon" means any weapon or device capable of being concealed on the person from which a shot can be discharged through the energy of an explosive, a pistol or revolver having a barrel with a smooth bore designed or redesigned to fire a fixed shotgun shell, weapons with combination shotgun and rifle barrels 12 inches or more, less than 18 inches in length, from which only a single discharge can be made from either barrel without manual reloading, and shall include any such weapon which may be readily restored to fire. Such term shall not include a pistol or a revolver having a rifled bore, or rifled bores, or weapons designed, made, or intended to be fired from the shoulder and not capable of firing fixed ammunition."


What the act did:

1. Required importers, manufactures and dealers of affected firearms and accessories to register with the Treasury Department. They also had to pay a tax of $1000.00 per year for importers and manufacturers, and $500.00 per year for dealers. Remember this was 1934. A thousand dollars in 1934 is approximately $15,000 now.

2. Regulated the transferring of affected firearms and accessories. To transfer an effected firearm or silencer became a chore. You have to fill out the paperwork, in duplicate. You have to supply a photo and fingerprints. You had to pay a $200.00 tax for each firearm. This was an oppressive tax. Most of these firearms could be had for $20.00 or so. Then you had to wait until the Treasury Department approved the application.

3. Required unique serial numbers be engraved on each of the affected firearms and accessories.

4. Required the Manufactures of affected firearms and accessories to apply to the Treasury Department before manufacturing the item. The manufacturer also had to pay a $200.00 tax on each item.

5. Importers could only import affected items for use by the U.S. government. No more souvenirs for the military.

These are the five main parts of the NFA. When it was passed and placed into effect, most people just ignored it. The majority of firearms owners thought it was pretty stupid and would not hold up to scrutiny by the Supreme Court. The passage of this law turned a very large portion of the citizenry into criminals.

The effects of the NFA have nothing to do with crime, organized or not. The criminals did not care that there was a law passed that made them criminals. The gangsters did not all of a sudden become civilly minded and decide to register the Thompson's they had in the boot of the automobile. What the NFA did do was horrible for the United States.

As stated earlier, the NFA made a very large number of law abiding citizens criminals.

The NFA also severely crippled the United States Military. Where were the new machine gun designs? Who was going to keep our small arms up to par with those of the European nations? Our military is still using the same firearms they used in Vietnam. There are no John Browning's coming up with a better machine gun for the military. Not me, I am not going to risk everything I have to come up with a shoulder mounted, lightweight, accurate, mini gun that fires case-less ammo at a rate of 1000+ rpm with no recoil. Neither is anyone else.

By taxing silencers, the NFA has caused people to be affected with permanent hearing loss and caused firing ranges to be shut down due to "too much noise".

The NFA (along with later laws) has caused the price of machine guns and silencers to sky rocket. Registered machine guns in the United States can cost dozens of times more than what they are worth in the world market (hmm.. that may be an enticement for the criminal element to smuggle... nah, it's against the law)

The National Firearms Act was challenged in Federal District Court and found unconstitutional. The case went to the Supreme Court, but the defendants and their lawyers did not appear. This is how the court ruled:

In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession of a 'shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length' has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense

At the time, short barreled shotguns were in use by the military. They were considered "Trench Guns". One lawyer could have changed the history of gun control if he would have just showed up that day. On a side note, short barreled shot guns are in use today by police departments all over the United States. They are in use with out tax stamps or special registration of the users.

So, to sum up all this information. The National Firearms Act of 1934 did nothing to curb crime, as a matter of fact it created criminals out of ordinarily law abiding citizens.

What the act did do was suppress the ingenuity of our small arms manufacturers and put our military decades behind the curve when it comes to weaponry. The act also made owning a piece of metal or wood that might be 1/8" too short a crime. The act also set the ground work for the formation of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. A tax collection agency that has "special" police powers.