A Brief Commentary on the National Firearm Act of 1934

The following is a brief commentary that a friend of mine wrote in regards to the National Firearm Act of 1934. This was the beginning of the gun control movement in the United States. Please read thoughtfully and develop your own conclusions as to what the passage of this bill has meant for the United States.

Commentary written by Greg Cooper.

One of the most debated, and frequently confusing, subjects to date is the subject of gun control. Statistics are thrown around and are in great numbers as to how it has or has not affected a change in the crime rates involving firearms. The National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA) restricted the purchase and/or possession of automatic weapons. To clarify; “automatic weapon” means a weapon capable of firing multiple rounds of the chambered cartridge with a single pull of the the trigger, i.e. a “machine gun”or “submachine gun”. We all have images of the gangsters with Thompson Submachine guns mowing down police and opponents, such as during the Valentines Day Massacre, stuck in our heads. While this Act apparently lowered the number of deaths attributed to legally owned weapons of this genre (only two since passage by all statistics I can find) it can not be said that it truly effected the number of people killed by illegal firearms of this nature. We need to remember that the majority of the weapons used to commit crimes before the passage of the NFA were committed with illegal weapons anyway. The infamous Bonnie and Clyde used Browning Automatic Rifles, or BARs, stolen from military armories. The same is true for the Thompsons in the hands of the infamous gangs of the time. So did the Bill really curtail the homicides committed by “machine guns”? Legally owned ones, the answer is a dubious yes. This is only true because you can not put a number on the homicides that MIGHT have been committed by such a weapon, and it took away the availability of such from the average citizen( not that they were readily available in the first place). Illegally possessed ones, the answer is still a dubious yes. The reason I say this is; there are still a number of murders every year which are committed by such weapons. These are frequently illegally modified legal semi-automatic weapons, which transforms them into an automatic weapon.(“semi-automatic” means a weapon capable of firing only a single round of the chambered cartridge with each pull of the trigger). To explain further; it is my opinion that it did reduce these numbers by making it a Federal crime to possess the weapons; while murder with a semi-automatic is generally only a State crime. Your small time criminal generally doesn’t care to play ball with Federal Courts, Law Enforcement or Prisons. Penalties are much harsher in the Federal arena than the State.

The NFA of 1934 was the beginning of gun control within the nation. Since the ownership of legal automatic weapons was rare in the first place among the average population what did the Act truly do? It placed restriction on the law abiding citizen as a result of the actions of the the lawless. By the definition of the word “lawless” these people were not going to follow society’s laws in the first place. The actual death rate due to automatic weapons in 1934, and prior, was low despite all the movie and book portrayals of the “Roaring ’20s”. Therefore regulating something which is almost nonexistent in the first place puts a yoke of burden on those who are not doing anything wrong. Those predisposed to breaking the law and committing murder are going to do it whether they have a machine gun in their hands or not. All in all the NFA of 1934 is a continuing failure, that succeeded only in opening the way for greater restrictions by the Government on the people who tend to obey the legal system.

Does it seem that I am contradicting myself by saying that the NFA was a failure yet did decrease the number of deaths attributed to the automatic weapon? Not really. It may have decreased the number of deaths attributed to the weapon BUT it’s overall impact on the number of homicides committed with a firearm that is legally owned is absolutely minimal. Prior to 1934 I can find only two murders committed with a legally owned automatic weapon. Since that time, as I stated earlier, only two more have been committed. Illegal weapons still flurish within our borders. Regulation of firearms has only removed the rights of the law abiding to own or possess them, it has not made a dent in the number of people who illegally possess firearms. This Act would be as effective, if not more so, if it simply raised the punishment for committing the crime with, or possessing a stolen, such weapon nation wide, instead of trying to remove them totally from the hands of everyone.

In the present, if they were available, I quite probably wouldn’t own one. The cost would far out weigh any reason I would have for filling another space in my gun rack. I can not see an honest civilian use for a automatic weapon, except one. To make an oppressive government fearful of a wrathful, angry population which it knows is armed, could, and has, overthrown tyrants.