Scholarly Analysis Of The National Firearms Act
BY Herschel Smith
7 years, 4 months ago
Dave Hardy at Of Arms and the Law links a very in depth and insightful commentary and analysis of the National Firearms Act (NFA). Dave comments concerning SBRs.
In 1934, they were treated as gangster weapons, although I don’t ever recall hearing of gangsters using them. They tended to have their fights at pistol or shotgun range, not at 100+ yards. Originally the minimum barrel length was 18″; then the government discovered it had sold millions of M-1 carbines as surplus, and they had 16.5″ barrels. So the minimum length was reduced to 16″. Which did a nice job of showing how arbitrary it was.
If you follow the link you’ll get to the scholarly paper (PDF), and I highly recommend it to you. It would be nice if my readers would tackle this document and make some salient points. There are a lot of observations I could make but just don’t have the time or energy.
One thing I will observe is that on PDF pages 500 and 521, it’s noted that a “pistol” is defined as follows.
[A] weapon originally designed, made, and intended to fire a projectile (bullet) from one or more barrels when held in one hand, and having (a) a chamber(s) as an integral part(s) of, or permanently aligned with, the bore(s); and (b) a short stock designed to be gripped by one hand and at an angle to and extending below the line of the bore(s).
While some shooting instructors may invoke off-hand or one-handed shooting as a small part of their efforts because of possible hand-to-hand combat situations, reaching for reloads, attempting to keep an attacker from taking the slide out of battery, or other reasons, this is usually what we might call “beyond design basis.”
No instructor in his right mind today would actually teach that it’s appropriate or preferable to shoot a pistol or revolver with a single hand. That’s how much the science has evolved since passage of the NFA.
It’s an old, antiquated, worthless, useless, tangled, self-contradictory, laughable abomination, and the more the Congress and Senate (and by extension, the ATF) hang on to this ridiculous document, the more absurd they look.
As usual, reader remarks concerning the study are welcome.
On July 17, 2017 at 6:58 am, Geoff said:
Every Federal and State gun law technically violates the 2nd. Amendment, “shall not be infringed.”
IMO.
On July 17, 2017 at 9:41 am, Longbow said:
This law is a valuable tool for Law Imposement to control crime! Sounds to me like you’re anti- Law Imposement! You just want cops to be shot and little old lady’s and kittens! You want school children to be able to go into a pawn shop and buy machine guns and grenades and nuclear weapons! We gotta have some controls!
On July 17, 2017 at 9:55 am, Longbow said:
My thoughts on the matter, written several years ago.
http://pluckingtheyew.blogspot.com/2011/12/open-letter-read-at-your-own-risk.html
Why doesn’t one (or all) of those super duper good guys who are in the “vast majority”, look at his supervisor and say,
“Prosecute a man and put him in prison for having a vertical fore grip on his AR pistol? No, Boss! That is wrong! I ain’t doin’ it!”
Why doesn’t ANY of that “vast majority” ever testify before Congress and tell the truth, that “gun control” controls only the law abiding and has NO effect on crime or criminals?
Why doesn’t the “vast majority” ever testify before congress in SUPPORT of, and in defense of, our natural and constitutionally secured Right, to keep and CARRY arms?
Jeepers, questions that make you go, “Hmmmmm…”
On July 17, 2017 at 10:35 am, Herschel Smith said:
@Longbow,
You make a good point, but the answer is (a) prosecutors are mostly comprised of evil men who won’t disobey orders to prosecute for ridiculous infractions that shouldn’t exist to begin with, and (b) we don’t get jury nullifications because American juries are mostly comprised of idiots and nincompoops.
On July 18, 2017 at 9:38 am, Longbow said:
Mr. Smith,
Thank you and you are correct. One of the underlying points I was making in that piece, is that “good men” would never enforce that law against the American People, nor would “good men” come up with such a law.