New Gun Control Talking Point

I don't think the IRA supports background checks. I think you meant to type NRA.

 

Automatic Weapons Are Legal, But It Takes A Lot To Get 1 Of The 630,000 In The US
Automatic Weapons Are Legal, But It Takes A Lot To Get 1 Of The 630,000 In The US

According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), as of 2017, there were 630,000 machine guns in the U.S. That, however, is a fraction of the roughly 400 million guns in America.
So how does anyone come to own one of these guns?
Automatic weapons are governed by legislation from a bygone era, unfamiliar to many, one of the last vestiges of stringent federal gun control.

National Firearms Act
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The National Firearms Act (NFA), 73rd Congress, Sess. 2, ch. 757, 48 Stat. 1236, enacted on June 26, 1934, currently codified as amended as I.R.C. ch. 53, is an Act of Congress in the United States that, in general, imposes a statutory excise tax on the manufacture and transfer of certain firearms and mandates the registration of those firearms. The Act was passed shortly after the repeal of Prohibition. The NFA is also referred to as Title II of the Federal firearms laws. The Gun Control Act of 1968 ("GCA") is Title I.

All transfers of ownership of registered NFA firearms must be done through the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record (the "NFA registry").[2] The NFA also requires that the permanent transport of NFA firearms across state lines by the owner must be reported to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Temporary transports of some items, most notably suppressors, do not need to be reported.

The impetus for the National Firearms Act of 1934 was the gangland crime of the Prohibition era, such as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929, and the attempted assassination of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933.[3][4]:824[5][6] Like the current National Firearms Act (NFA), the 1934 Act required NFA firearms to be registered and taxed. The $200 tax was quite prohibitive at the time (equivalent to $3,746 in 2018). With a few exceptions, the tax amount is unchanged.[5][6]

Originally, pistols and revolvers were to be regulated as strictly as machine guns; towards that end, cutting down a rifle or shotgun to circumvent the handgun restrictions by making a concealable weapon was taxed as strictly as a machine gun.[7]

Conventional pistols and revolvers were ultimately excluded from the Act before passage, but other concealable weapons were not.[7] Regarding the definition of "firearm," the language of the statute as originally enacted was as follows:

The term "firearm" means a shotgun or rifle having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length, or any other weapon, except a pistol or revolver, from which a shot is discharged by an explosive if such weapon is capable of being concealed on the person, or a machine gun, and includes a muffler or silencer for any firearm whether or not such firearm is included within the foregoing definition.[8]
Under the original Act, NFA weapons were machine guns, short-barreled rifles (SBR), short-barreled shotguns (SBS), any other weapons (AOW, i.e., concealable weapons other than pistols or revolvers), and silencers for any type of NFA or non-NFA weapon. Minimum barrel length was soon amended to 16 inches for rimfire rifles and by 1960 had been amended to 16 inches for centerfire rifles as well.[9]

The United States Supreme Court, in 1968, decided the case of Haynes v. United States in favor of the defendant, which effectively gutted the National Act of 1934. As one could possess an NFA firearm and choose not to register it, and not face prosecution due to Fifth Amendment protections, the Act was unenforceable. To deal with this, Congress rewrote the Act to make registration of existing weapons impossible except by the government (previously, an existing firearm could be registered by any citizen). In addition to fixing the defect identified in Haynes, the revision tightened definitions of the firearms regulated by the Act and incorporated a new category of firearm, the Destructive Device, which was first regulated in the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968.[citation needed]

NFA categories have been modified by laws passed by Congress, rulings by the Department of the Treasury, and regulations promulgated by the enforcement agency assigned, known as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives or ATF.

 

Yes. I'm a bit cloudy today/ I had a hip replacement yesterday.

 

I'm so sorry I teased you about your misstatement. I have several family members who have had that surgery and recovery can be tough. You are doing remarkably well to even be able to post! I will pray for your speedy recovery.

 

I really appreciate your prayers. I had a great surgeon rec. by a dozen people from my church who had been operated on by him and was on the prayer list. The real GREAT SURGEON is taking care of me.

 

Tell that to Mountbatten... kaboom