Listening to the last VC (Fatwas from atheists), I heard you mention he Hughes amendment. Now, like you, I'm by no means a scholar about thee things, but it was my understanding that the Hughes amendment was a sop to other anti-gun congress critters to help them to vote for the underlying bill.Well, that got me to thinkin'... (and we all know how dangerous that can be)... I had the impression that the Hughes Amendment was added as an attempt to kill the 1986 Firearms Owners Protection Act (hereby abbreviated FOPA) - whereas it was actually an addition to the FOPA to help it pass. Here's the entirety of the Hughes Amendment:
But I've been wrong before!
An amendment to make it unlawful for any person to transfer or possess a machinegun except in the case of a machinegun that was lawfully possessed before the date of enactment.One sentence. Thirty one words. And with its passage, the price of automatic firearms skyrocketed as the supply became a fixed commodity. "Transferable" full-auto firearms - meaning firearms made before 1986 - sell for anywhere from $3,000 for an Ingram M-11 to upwards of $25K for a Thompson submachine gun. Other more exotic Class IIIs like belt-feds and chain guns can sell well into the six figures. Transferable M-16s sell for roughly $10K - whereas new select-fire rifles sell for $1200 - $1500 - to law enforcement only. Think about that - the "patrol rifle" that many big city police departments use for special forces costs nearly an order of magnitude less than what you or I can purchase - and is new, as opposed to 24 years old or older.
This is absolutely contrary to the spirit of the Second Amendment.
Before the Hughes Amendment, all that was needed to own a fully automatic weapon was an extra $200. That $1500 brand new Colt select-fire M16 would cost me $1700, rather than $10K and 24 years of wear on it if it weren't for the Hughes Amendment. With a fixed supply, prices will continue to climb, pushing most fully automatic firearms outside the price range of the vast majority of gun owners. Sure, I might scrape together $4K for an M-11 someday, but that's hardly an effective use of my discretionary income. An M16 currently sells for around $13K - how many people can afford what is essentially a good used car for a firearm?
This is absolutely contrary to the spirit of the Second Amendment.
Our Founding Fathers were leery of a professional standing army. They had seen the tyranny that could be wrought with soldiers bought and paid for by the ruling class, and wanted to make sure that all Americans had the means by which to resist should the unthinkable happen and the standing army need to be overthrown. They deliberately hamstrung the government from restricting the right to bear arms - all arms, not just the politically correct ones - so that there would always be the "safety valve" of the Second Amendment. They wanted, more than anything, to make sure that the day the government has a monopoly on force never came.
Putting the same weapon that our soldiers use in theaters around the world out of the price range of the average citizen is exactly the sort of thing that the Second Amendment was supposed to inhibit. Thomas Jefferson laid forth his thoughts on the matter rather succinctly: "No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms". GunCite lists a plethora of quotes from the Founding Fathers on guns, gun control, and other forms of governmental oppression - one thing is crystal clear - they wanted us to own firearms, and they wanted the government to be unable to prevent us from owning firearms.
Limiting the supply of military-grade weaponry, while driving the price of comparable hardware beyond the reach of most citizens, runs completely contrary to what they intended. The Hughes Amendment in one sentence unmade two centuries of rough parity. While the 1934 Federal Firearms Act did limit the availability to owning a military grade weapon, the Hughes Amendment moved them almost completely off the table. And as time goes on, and as machines break down - and become more and more valuable - fewer and fewer legal machine guns will be available at any price.
So the question becomes - how do we un-do the damage wrought by the Hughes Amendment? With the advances we've seen in military hardware in the past 24 years, the gulf between the firearms that the military possesses and what the average citizen can own (prisoners behind the red curtains of MA/CA/NJ/NY/etc. notwithstanding) grows ever wider. As gun control advocates so smugly point out, a true shooting war between the armed forces and the average citizen would be lopsided indeed (leaving aside many logistical points, of course). To the freedom-loving American, that should be a screaming neon flag - if the gulf is widening between the professional army and the true militia (all able-bodied persons between the age of 18 and 45), we should be working to close that gulf, not expand it.
Yet for the past 75 years or more we've been actively working to make it harder to own firearms. The Federal Firearms Act of 1934 put stringent regulations on whole classes of arms. The Gun Control Act of 1968 put more restrictions on gun ownership, forbade importation of certain arms, and banned mail-ordering. The Brady Bill of 1994 brought us waiting periods and background checks. We've seen gun rights take hit after hit after hit, and only in the past 20 or so years have we begun to see a change for the better. Concealed carry has gotten more prevalent across the nation, with more and more states allowing concealed carry. We even have a first: more states do not require a permit to carry a concealed firearm than forbid concealed carry entirely. Things are getting better, indeed; but they could be better still.
It's time we started taking back more of our Second Amendment freedoms.
That is all.
14 comments:
[O]nly in the past 20 or so years have we begun to see a change for the better. Concealed carry has gotten more prevalent across the nation[.]
While I'm all for concealed carry (duh), let's not confuse the issue...
This is to protect me from this, not them.
One thing you're missing is that the NFA fee has always been $200 from the start. That was a lot of money in 1934. In effect, the Hughes Amendment extended the spirit of the NFA, which was to make the ownership of full-auto weapons as much of a hassle as possible.
At least the drafters of the NFA were aware that they didn't have constitutional authority to ban machine guns outright, so they went the "practical ban through excessive taxation" route. These days, our politicos don't even give lip service to governmental restrictions regarding the 2A anymore.
The power to tax is the power to ban, for all intents and purposes. In 1934, the average income for a bus driver or school teacher was $1,300, so the NFA fee was pretty much a monthly paycheck on top of the cost of the gun. In 1986, $200 was a lot more doable for Joe Average, so they had to come up with a new way to keep the financial barrier to full-auto ownership high.
Wait a minnit JayG! A little secret I have is that my real name is New Jovian Thunderbolt Rockefeller, and I have acquired a a lot of machine guns as an investment item. If you let people buy M4 and M240Bs made today then the value of my M16s and M60 will fall through the floor! I need the artificial scarcity the Hughes Amendment provides and so do all the other rich owners and will fight, politically, to keep things as is.
(of course, I'm not really rich and stocked with machine guns, but there are dudes out there that are and for the reason above)
Oh it's not right, and no one wants to see 2 sets of firearms enthusiasts go at each other... bit it is a reality of the situation.
ZerCool,
It's all part of gun rights, though; that's what I'm getting at.
Your point is well-taken, though - where we are winning are areas that don't directly threaten the politicians. All the concealable handguns in the world are ineffective at rifle ranges. The Second Amendment is not about hunting, nor personal protection so much - it's the last vanguard against tyrants.
Marko,
That's another good point - that the NFA fee was originally engineered to keep most out. When you think about it, though, it's pretty freakin' stupid, given the times - the 1934 NFA was supposed to keep guns out of the hands of the bootleggers, who were at the time one of a small group of people who COULD afford the tax!
T-bolt,
While I agree that we ideally don't want to pit different pro-2A groups against each other, I think the number of folks who own hundreds of thousands of dollars of Class III weaponry is extremely thin indeed.
You are, of course, correct that a repeal of the Hughes Amendment would destroy the worth of a good portion of arms - Bushmaster would be able to sell full-auto and select-fire ARs for around a tenth of the cost of the most beat-up transferable M16, immediately lowering the worth of those guns.
There's still a market, I think - because of the time that's gone by, most of the transferable weapons are now antiques and rarities that will still command a premium (priced a SAA Colt lately?).
I'd trade that in a heartbeat, though, to get FA back...
The NFA owners I've talked to would be glad to see the Hughes amendment go. Sure they lose a lot of value, but think of all the additional guns they could buy. Of course, my perception is skewed, because I meet the ones who actually bring their NFA guns out to shoot. I'm sure there are some who have them solely as an investment who'll be pissed. Part of me says that's what you get for betting on regulations instead of investing in things with real value.
I'd wager we know a lot of the same NFA owners.
And yes, they'd be ecstatic - because it would mean new toys they could pick up at bargain basement prices.
$3K for a new MP5? A bahgain!
As for the speculators, well, if they do have pristine versions, even those are worth good coin - Like I said, priced a SAA lately? Heck, even an original WWI 1911 can approach $4-5K...
I'd wager an original FA Thompson from the 1920s in unmolested condition could still fetch upwards of $8-$10K from a collector.
For the record I am ok with losing the value of my transferable MGs.
There are two major logical issues with Hughes:
1) Hughes was to only allow MGs that were legally owned prior to 1968. Interpreting that in the English language, that would allow MGs legally owned prior to 1986. However this has been really crimped by GCA68 and unwritten ATF policy.
Specifically - imports. If we were limited to anything pre-86 for transferables, we'd be fine. TONS of euro MGs available. MG42 to AKs to AR10s, etc. But ATF has defined 'legally owned' to mean 'legally owned in the US and registered throughout and not subsequently removed from the US'
- And if you were to leave the country today with a transferable MG and return tomorrow, it would not be allowed back into the country.
2) The other issue with Hughes is the ATF (was IRS, remeber) derives all of its authority from federal tax codes. Under 922o, ATF cannot accept a tax payment for a post-86 MG. If the tax authority will not accept a tax payment on an item, how can that mean the item is prohibited ?
Let's say you try and buy a loaf of bread. There is no tax due on the bread. Does that make the bread illegal ?
At least one district court (LA?) ruled that if ATF wouldn't take the tax payment, then the individual could go ahead and buld an MG, tax free. When this ruling was taking place, ATF was getting swamped with F1s for MG builds and they sat on them (they usually just immediately deny) so ATF was clearly afraid they'd have to issue those forms approved - tax free.
I believe there was also a similar ruling in the 9th Circuit too. This was later reversed by the 9th on light of another unrelated case (Smith?). That case related to a person growing their own pot and getting prosecuted under interstate commerce rules. Even though the dope never crossed state lines, the gov't argued that by NOT crossing state lines, the intra-state dope disrupted the flow of inTER-state dope, thus falling under the rules of interstate commerce.
So the 9th reversed the pro-MG ruling because the home-built MG would affect the market for other MGs (which it sure would!) and thus was verbottten.
There are a couple of exploitable holes in NFA, which average joe can win if he has megadeep pockets and lawyers to match. But, it's much cheaper and less stress to just buy a transferable MG instead of fighting upstream.
I think Hamblen is headed in front of the supreme court which may directly challenge Hughes, but I'm not sure that is the best case to push the issue with.
But there is not a lot of push to overturn 922o (Hughes). NRA can KMA, they are more interested in delivering mindless hordes to manufacturers. GOA isn't going to pick that fight. JPFO could take it on but they are already seen as fringe and maybe a bit eccentric.
And there are many guys out there with fortunes tucked away in papered iron.
MGs have apprecated amazingly.
$100 Jap 99 in 1968 = $15k in 2010
$700 M16 in 1986 = $15k in 2010
In the 60s, there were so many STENs and such imported post WW2 that they were selling in the $5-10 range. Very little interest in paying $200 on a $5 gun, so many of them were deactivated and sold tax free. Of course if the deactivated MG has been continuously registered since 68, it could be reactivated today - but those paper trails really fall apart easily.
Here's a gutwrenching history of transferable MG prices :
http://www.blackrivermilitaria.com/annoy.html
On ideaology, I have to agree that the 922o (Hughes) and the NFA of '34 fly in the face against the 2A.
But.
In a real-world application, while I might like to be able to own a select fire item, in practicum, they're not as useful as you might imagine.
Having shot select fire, and having spent a lot of time thinking about it, in every applicative scenario I can think of, I'm not going to be providing suppressive cover fire, I'll probably be more concerned with ammo preservation and accuracy. As a comprimise, I might take a 'burst' option, but I haven't had enough time on trigger with a weapon that had that as a feature to say for sure.
This isn't to say I don't believe we, the little people, should be aboe to own one, I'm just saying that I'm not sure I'd use it.
Thing is, the application that machine guns are useful for (suppressive fire) is EXACTLY why we need them under the Second Amendment.
Come to think of it, same for the .50 BMG, which they are also trying to outlaw...
And just FTR, I've shot a fair amount of FA and select-fire weaponry, including some of the really cool toys owned by the guy who trains the MA State Police on full auto weaponry.
Would I shell out $10K on a transferable select-fire M16? Only if I hit the lottery.
Would I drop $1500 on a new select-fire AR-15 were they legal to buy? In a frikkin' heartbeat.
I would love to have FA back, but something tells me that the bean counters at the ammo companies would report the sales increase up to their bosses, who would tell their deputy V.P.'s of the corporation, who would immediately jack up the prices 3-4-5 fold to bailout the rest of their bloated, wasteful, foreign owned multinational. But if we don't try, we won't find out, right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6Mx2UcSEvQ
There have been developments in the fight recently.
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