AR pistols- new proposed rule -> SBR

[LRRPF52]

Sinclair, I have zero respect for Australians other than Klem, Melinda (a chance encounter in Innsbruck 32 years ago and no, I don't remember her last name) and Greg Norman (who gave the finger to the media long before any of us had the desire).

GF, a rifle with a barrel under 16" has always been illegal under the NFA. The NFA defines a rifle as:

c)Rifle
The term “rifle” means a weapon designed or redesigned, made or remade, and intended to be fired from the shoulder and designed or redesigned and made or remade to use the energy of the explosive in a fixed cartridge to fire only a single projectile through a rifled bore for each single pull of the trigger, and shall include any such weapon which may be readily restored to fire a fixed cartridge.

In all of their letters, the ATF has said "pistol braces" are ok as long as they are used as they are allegedly designed, but if the possessor takes action to design his/her weapon to be shouldered, then it becomes a SBR under the NFA. As I challenged above, find a single example of an ATF letter that doesn't have this caveat. Even better, for every YouTube video you can find of someone using an arm stabilizer as an arm stabilizer, I'll find you 20 where the arm stabilizer is shouldered.

I personally don't think this is the battle to fight since it can not be won - not in a court nor in the court of public opinion. The law has been in place for over 85 years. This has nothing to do with creating a law that tramples on the 2nd Amendment. It's enforcing a law that tramples on the 2nd amendment that already exists.

Bjorn, se the ATF's worksheet in the notice for an explanation. This should be where efforts should be focussed- on loosening the definition. The notions that pistols are meant to be fired with one hand and that being able to aim make something more like a rifle than a pistol are absurd.

This is historically incorrect, and I’ve been under that false premise most of my life as well.

A rifle with a barrel under 16” was not the arbitrary length set by the unconstitutional NFA in 1934.

That wording specifically stated that both shotguns and rifles could not have a barrel length shorter than 18 inches, which was intended to intimidate people from cutting down shotguns into “pistols, revolvers, or concealable firearms".

Under US Attorney General Cummings, a proponent of illegal National gun laws who saw taxation as a way around the restrictions on him in the Bill of Rights, his original NFA draft submitted to the House included provisions for taxing/banning machine-guns, pistols, and short shotguns, but not rifles. Even being the anti-gun zealot that he was, he never intended to regulate rifles under the NFA.

I’m stating this from the Congressional hearings on the NFA in 1934, which I have studied over many years. (If anyone else cares to do so, be prepared to read some of the most idiotic statements about firearms and the Constitution, not only from the Congressrats, but the “expert witnesses" from the NRA, who at least helped get the pistol provisions removed.)


Here’s where it gets interesting. The original NFA draft submitted by AG Cummings stated:

For the purpose of this act the term “firearm” means a pistol, revolver, shotgun having a barrel less than sixteen inches in length, or any other firearm capable of being concealed on the person, a muffler or silencer therefor, or a machine gun.

Congressman Knutson from Minnesota was “concerned" that his constituents’ rifles would be affected by the shotgun 16” length wording, so he asked that specific provisions be added to the NFA "to protect rifle hunters". Rifles were never mentioned in AG Cummings’ original draft. AG Cummings told him rifles aren’t covered, so there’s nothing to worry about.

Knutson said he would support the bill if they added wording about rifles, and increased the barrel length to 18”, just to make it extra credit for the “capable of being concealed on the person” intent of Cummings' illegal and unconstitutional draft. This would allow Knutson to tell his constituents he was making sure they could continue to hunt deer while the FDR administration went after gangsters, even though several scholars believe the real intent was a pistol ban after the assassination attempt on FDR in January 1933.



Later in the deliberations, an NRA expert witness challenged their intent to ban pistols, stating that pistols were perfectly suited for self defense and not limited to criminal intent activities, "as long as you had a permit”. So Cummings didn’t have support to pass NFA with the pistol ban and 18” barrel or longer rifles not being mentioned. Pistols were dropped, and under 18” rifles were added to NFA.

The bill went back and forth between the Senate and House, working out dealer and importation taxes, and the bill was passed in both houses by voice vote with no recorded votes in either chamber of Congress.

Inexplicably, in the 1960s, the NFA was amended back to 16” for rifle barrel lengths, while leaving shotguns at Knutson’s 18” proposal for rifles (confused yet?).

One rumor was that it was to cover M-1 Carbine "bring-backs” from the Wars, but the M-1 Carbine has.....an 18” barrel.

TL/DR: The NFA was meant to ban pistols primarily because of how easy they were to conceal. Rifles were never intended to be in the NFA and short-barreled shotguns were originally meant to be 16” length, until a Minnesota Congresscman inserted rifles into the draft legislation, which was passed without any recorded vote in either house of Congress, then signed by FDR.

When you peel back the historical record, you find the same thing we have today: Unworthy maggots occupying the seats of Congress and Justice, actively attacking the Bill of Rights as if it were a sport, violating the most explicit laws of our Nation that were designed to restrict their natural devilish tendencies.

Sources:

National Firearms Act 1934 Committee Transcripts

Chu, Vivian S. 2013. "Congressional Authority to Regulate Firearms: A Legal Overview.” Congressional Research Report #R43033, April 5th.

Clinton, Joshua and John Lapinski. 2006. "Measuring Legislative Accomplishment, 1877-1994," American Journal of Political Science 50(1): 232-249.

Stathis, Stephen W. 2014. Landmark Legislation, 1774-2012: Major U.S. Acts and Treaties, 2nd Edition. Washington: CQ Press.