The Second Amendment contains 27 words. It does not authorize a federal registry, a tax on exercising the right, and it certainly does not authorize the creation of a federal agency to police firearms sales, possession, manufacturing, or transfers. Congress built all of that despite an oath of office that binds them not to do so, and they did it one crisis at a time.
1934: The First Tax on a Right
The National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934 was sold to the public as a response to Prohibition-era gang violence — Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, and the Thompson submachine gun. The NFA imposed a $200 transfer tax on machine guns, suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns, which, in 1934 dollars, was a near-prohibitive sum for most Americans. The intent, disguised as regulation, was nothing short of infringement dressed in the language of taxation. The federal government lacked Constitutional authority to ban these items outright, so it taxed them out of accessibility.
1968: The Infrastructure of Control
The Gun Control Act (GCA) followed the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Congress framed the GCA as a response to those tragedies when they were, in fact, actively building a permanent infrastructure for federal firearms regulation. This infringement created the Federal Firearms License (FFL) system, the prohibition on private-party interstate sales, the list of prohibited persons, and a framework for expanding subsequent infringements. Lee Harvey Oswald bought his rifle through the mail, so the GCA ended mail-order firearm sales. Of course, this did nothing to address the circumstances that produced Oswald, but it gave the federal government jurisdiction over every commercial firearms transaction in the country.
1986: The Registry Closes the Door to Common Americans
Buried in the Firearms Owners Protection Act (FOPA) of 1986, the Hughes Amendment is the single provision that limited civilian machine gun ownership to guns manufactured before May 19, 1986. The intent, and ultimate effect, was to price law-abiding Americans out of a class of firearms protected by the plain text of the Second Amendment. A transferable M16 that cost a few hundred dollars in 1985 now sells for $15,000 to $30,000, depending on the configuration. The right was not eliminated, but priced into irrelevance for the vast majority of Americans.
1993 – 1998: The Modern Architecture
The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993, which mandated federal background checks for commercial firearm purchases, established the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) in 1998. One year later, the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) prohibited the manufacture of semiautomatic rifles with certain cosmetic features for civilian sale. Although the AWB expired in 2004 and was not renewed, it set a precedent for Congress to ban entire categories of commonly owned firearms based on their appearance.
Heller, the Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
The Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller confirmed what the plain text already said — that the Second Amendment protects the individual right to keep and bear arms, but it also left open a list of regulations described as “presumptively lawful,” giving lower courts decades of license to uphold and create new infringements that could survive no legitimate Constitutional test. Heller was a Trojan horse disguised as a victory, and it did nothing to restore what the NFA, GCA, or the Hughes Amendment stole from Americans.
The Pattern
Every significant federal gun law since has followed the same sequence: a crisis, a legislative response framed around that crisis, and a permanent expansion of federal jurisdiction that outlasted the crisis by decades.
The crimes that justified each law were real, but the laws themselves never addressed them, and they were never meant to. What they did address, with remarkable consistency, was Congress’s contempt for the Constitution’s fealty to law-abiding Americans and the government’s growing audacity when it came to infringing upon the right to bear arms.
This has led to further attacks upon the Second Amendment by state and local governments, encouraged and, at times, incentivized by the federal government. Let this serve as a reminder that, as we approach the 250th anniversary of the United States of America, the Second Amendment has not changed. Congress has simply spent 90 years destroying it.
Anyone have a list of gun laws before 1934?
Sullivan Act, disarming “cowboys” in Tombstone, what else that wasn’t directed at slave and indigenous people??
Sullivan act was limited to NY (and largely ignored outside NYC for years) and Tombstone style laws only existed due to territory status which quickly disappeared with statehood. Always fun seeing older movies where a pistol and ammo are purchased at a general store with groceries.
Don’t forget, the General Store also had a supply of Whisky and tobacco products, some also stocked sticks of dynamite you could buy.
It’s pretty evident that BATFE should be a supermarket chain instead of a bloated Federal agency.
I was with my dad when he bought me my first gun-a .410 crack barrel- in a hardware and lumber store @ $24
Vending machines or drive through preferred.
I am old enough to remember mail ordering guns from the Sears catalog. Straight to your front door.
When I went to high school half the vehicles in the student parking lot were pickups and quite a few of those had shotguns and rifles in the rear windows.
When I was 13 I bought two rifles at different yard sales and rode them home across the handle bars of my bike.
“disarming ‘cowboys in Tombstone” wasn’t actually a passed law or ordinance. It was a sheriff imposed restriction, and was written into the town books as an ordinance rather than passed and adopted as an ordinance by the town governance. Because it appeared as an ordinance it was deemed illegal to violate – thus the sheriff created defacto law, kinda like the Biden admin did with the ATF rules by just making them up and saying its a rule thus illegal to violate. (Tombstone had both a town marshal and a sheriff. The town marshal was responsible for local law enforcement within the town, while the sheriff oversaw law enforcement in the surrounding county.)
And the phase its self – “disarming ‘cowboys in Tombstone” – is actually a reference to the gun fight at the OK corral (which actually wasn’t at the OK corral – it took place in a a narrow vacant lot on Fremont Street, roughly 50–80 feet west of the corral’s rear entrance, between C.S. Fly’s boarding house and photography studio and the Harwood house, it lasted about 30 seconds)
congress aholes, try enforcing your ****** bullshit
.40 caliber Bugger is correct here:
“They don’t always ban what you love in one shot.
They regulate it.
They tax it.
They restrict it.
They make it harder to build, harder to buy, harder to own, and harder to use.
Then one day, the thing you actually wanted is gone — and they swear nobody banned anything.”
ht* tps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsdBe6xMzuM
Reference: ht&tps://www.shootingnewsweekly.com/gun-control/when-locals-refuse-to-enforce-unconstitutional-gun-bans/
Except it’s not happening. I can walk into a pawn shop and 5 minutes later walk out with a whole bag of guns. THE SKY IS STILL NOT FALLING. 🤣🤣🤣
Try it in NY and come talk to me.
“Except it’s not happening. I can walk into a pawn shop and 5 minutes later walk out with a whole bag of guns. THE SKY IS STILL NOT FALLING. ”
Except is is happening, you just aren’t affected by it where you live. Its like the flu, you might not get it but it does go around the country and is happening even if you don’t get it.
Except it is happening. Its just not happening to you.
Its like the flu, it happens but because you don’t get the flu it does not mean the flu does not exist.
For example, a (usually) ‘non-detriment’ example we are all familiar with but don’t give it much thought and just do it; The fact that you need to complete a 4473 and background check to buy those guns (if you didn’t rob the place to walk out with a bag of guns 🤣) is an effect of it happening, just not in a detrimental manner to you and its something we accept and move on.
Speaking of laws getting long in the tooth.
Add in the majority of us have now all been born after 1934. This becomes viewed as a punishment for something that happened before we existed that we now have to deal with.
These aren’t fundamental rights that hold as true today as the day they were laid out, they’re laws generated for a time that no longer exists.
Might as well ban fire and pointy sticks.
Couple that with most of the fear was generated by Hollywood creating fictitious scenarios. Should we REALLY be upholding laws and creating criminals based on movies?
Thousands of people use supressors, SBR’s and machine guns every day. It’s just become a rich man’s sport more or less. Therefore, the law should not be biased towards the less wealthy only.
if it’s dismantled why do we still have the right to bear arms? 🤣
Did you misread the article, drink too much, or post while retarded?
I vote post while retarded. In other words, a Democrat.
If a government (state or federal) burdens the exercise of a constitutional right continually or over time with increasing ‘regulation’ or ‘law’ requirements or demands on the exercise it is the same as ‘dismantling’ the constitutional right because without the free exercise of the right although it may still exist in writing its usage and exercise effectively become chilled, either in whole or part, into disuse against the will and/or to the detriment of those to whom the right belongs and applies.
Or in other words, removing the free exercise of the right by incrementalism over time eventually effectively negates the 2A as a constitutional right even though it may still exist in writing.