Gun Control That Actually Works

[SecularMotion]

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.

In speeches, publications and a steady stream of fund-raising literature, the N.R.A. rails against gun registration and gun owner databases. In 2008, the organization’s chief executive, Wayne LaPierre, claimed that photographing and fingerprinting gun owners was “the key gun control scheme” of the candidate Barack Obama, who, Mr. LaPierre predicted, would confiscate every gun in America before the end of his first term as president. The N.R.A. now says that the “real goal” of “gun control supporters” like Hillary Clinton is “ gun confiscation.”

But the longstanding National Firearms Act not only already mandated the registration of all owners of machine guns, short-barreled rifles, silencers and other weapons deemed highly dangerous at the time, it created a national database of those gun owners with their mug shots and fingerprints, and a detailed description of each weapon purchased, including its serial number. Purchasers of “N.F.A. weapons,” as they are known, must pass an F.B.I. background check, be approved by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms and pay a $200 tax. Stolen weapons must be reported to the A.T.F. immediately — the sort of requirement the N.R.A. opposes for other gun thefts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/31/opinion/gun-control-that-actually-works.html

[Giggity]

1. That registration led to the banning of all firearms not registered prior to 1986.

Thereby directly supporting the argument that registration leads to gun bans and "the demise of the second amendment"

[gejohnston]

3. only machine guns

[Nuclear Unicorn]

4. For now.

[beevul]

5. You can hear them all thinking "its a good start"...N/T

[ileus]

6. "Common sense ban"

[gejohnston]

2. How does it define "works"?

The only reason short barreled shotguns and short barreled rifles are NFA is because the original version of the bill included handguns. The handgun part was removed from the bill. In most countries, what we define as an SBR or SBSs are regulated the same as regular long guns. In fact, SBSs are regulated less in Canada than they are here.

Silencers was more of an anti poaching measure than crime. They aren't used in crime and if you were to, they work the same as a car muffler. That is why it is illegal to possess a firearm and a two liter soda bottle in Australian states. If you are going to the range or hunting in Australia, you can't have a two liter soda bottle in your possession. In neighboring New Zealand, you order them online or your LGS for a couple of hundred bucks.

Machine guns are used in crimes now about as much as they were then. New machine gun registrations have been banned since 1986. Pre NFA private machine gun sales were almost nonexistent outside of security companies like Brinks. There were two reasons for it. One is that they were very expensive and not useful for more much beyond range toys for rich people. Granted, the mob had a few. The roving gangs of bank robbers for a short time in the 1930s usually stole theirs from national guard armories and police armories. The one Dillinger used was stolen from the police department that he busted out of in Ohio. The FBI returned it to the county a few years ago.

[Eleanors38]

7. These bans look good, when supply & demand are left out of the equation...

Frankly, outside of a few wealthy collectors and a few nut-husslin' hoodlums, there ain't much demand for machine guns. Now, if silencers were much cheaper, and the feds ould drop their silly tax/paperwork requirements, millions would be sold, esp. to hunters.

All the federal police registration, records, fingerprints, interviews, and the other rustling paperwork which stimulates the NYT in its nether reaches, are what banners want:. Non-stop restrictions ending in bans. Same as it ever was.

EDIT:. Juding from secmo's quantity of sposts, it appears the NYT may be displacing the WaPo as propagandist-of-record for gun bans, quite an accomplishment.

[Kang Colby]

8. Get real.

I mean come on. All or most guns falling under the NFA provisions? What political accomplishment over the last 80 years would lead one to believe this kind of regulatory scheme is in the cards? I can't think of one.

If gun controllers couldn't accomplish this during the roughly 30 years between 1968 and the mid to late 1990s when public sentiment was more favorable to their cause...what in the Sam Dickens makes them think this is anything more than a pipe dream now?