Virginia Gun Owners Forum - VGOF

to repeal the 1934 NFA? also, do people really fear "machine guns" so much that its the reason no politician has overturned it? i was looking up NFA rifles earlier, and its not the 200 dollar tax thats so bad, but the cost of the actual firearm. couldnt this be seen as an infringement of the 2nd Amend?

Its like anything else the government gets. Once they pass it they play hell with getting it repealed. Especially if they can regulate and make money on it.

Repeal NFA? Impossible for at least the near future. The NFA was already upheld as a tax law so no politician is going to repeal it. There are only two exceptions I can see to that. First, if both houses of Congress and the President became controlled by politicians like Ron Paul (I use him because he has a record. I presume that his son Rand Paul and a lot of the Tea Party candidates may be like him, but we have to wait and see...promises are one thing, action is another). It could happen, but we would need several more election cycles like the last one (assuming again they are the real McCoy). It isn't likely though.

Second, the financial situation of the US degrades to the point the ruling class actually is thinking of cutting such useless programs for budget reasons. However, what is far more likely is that they adjust the $200 upwards to make more money/reduce the people who are acquiring NFA items. $200 is outrageous when you consider all they really do is enter the information into a database, then sign and stamp your form. Any background checks are done after the stamp is approved and you go to the dealer to pick it up (same 4473 as you would for any other gun). $200 is especially outrageous when you consider it was originally $200 in 1934 dollars and they made the mistake (thankfully) of not inflation adjusting it. If this calc is correct, $200 in 1934 is like $3,271.95 in 2010 dollars. http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm Of course that is using the official inflation numbers which are always under estimated and manipulated by the government for political purposes. Any budget issues is likely to get that number altered up, not repealing NFA IMHO.

The particular section which causes the extraordinarily high prices of machine gun in particular is Regan's 1986 ATF reform bill. That bill gave the ATF the authority to ban new production. The cost to make a full auto AR and a semi-auto are basically the same. Privileged government authorities pay less for their M4/16s than we do for our ARs. The prices are outrageous because you have a fixed supply and increasing population/demand. AFAIK, that provision has never been challenged, but it is possible that the SCOTUS would strike down a complete ban like that. The better question is, why hasn't it been challenged in 14 years?

Simple. The big donors for the NRA don't want it to be. They can afford the machine gun prices costing more than any of my automobiles and if such a ban were struck down they would lose a huge investment. Basically, their $10k+ machine guns would be worth no more and probably a lot less than a NIB one after the ban is struck down. Imagine having a original Colt M16 worth tens of thousands is suddenly worth $800 because anyone who wants to pay the tax can buy a new one for that much. Things are so bad that Hollywood asked for and got a special provision allowing them to purchase new machine guns in that ATF "reform" bill the NRA championed last year. No, the NFA is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

Yep not a chance, but hey a man can dream right?

Wonder if anything like the South Dakota "Firearms Freedom Act" would have any bearing on this? Or since it falls under tax law - it's not the states right to decide....

Here is my .02 on the idea. As the country becomes more and more urban, and less and less rural, folks exposure to firearms is falling. 30 years ago, you could pull into any high school parking lot in the western half of the state and you would see multiple pickup trucks driven by students, with a gun rack in the back window and 2 of the follow hanging in the hooks a .22 rimfire rifle, a 12 gauge shotgun, a lever action .30-30, a bolt action .30-06 or livestock handling cane. In the past, when there was a draft, many folks were introduced to firearms through the military. The military is such a small part of our society now and the percentage of our population that have served, is lower than it has ever been. A lot of kid's exposure and a lot adult's exposure to firearms anymore is limited to video games and the news. Since the advent of CNN and all the other 3 letter news networks and the 24 hour news cycle, we are getting overexposed to bloodshed. We see the same thing every twenty minutes for days. Just 30 years ago you would have had a quick interuption, watch for news at 6, and more news at 11, not the endless stream of "Subject Matter Experts" or witnesses. The hype has made the country paranoid. How many kids aren't allowed out of their parent's sight for fear of them being snatched up by a stranger? The truth, those kids are most likely to be grabbed in a custody dispute by a parent or by somebody else who knows the child.

Between human nature to fear that which we don't understand (in this case firearms), paranoia being fed by the news (an inanimate object causing somebody to commit a crime), people don't even realize they are 2 1/2 times more likely to be killed in an automobile accident involving alcohol than to be murdered. Given all that, there is no way I could ever realistically hope for the repeal of the NFA of 1934. Even if I could own one, I couldn't afford to feed it. Although I really do love the FN M240B...

The only people who are truly afraid of machine guns, are the politicians in Washington. They don't want us "good little slaves" to have the ability to spew 1000s of rounds of high explosive incendiary armour piercing bullets back at their hired UN thugs/goons/general dirt bags.

If all you want is cheap machineguns, getting rid of the NFA in toto won't help you at all. The ban on new machineguns is in the Gun Control Act.

Common misconception. Same as people calling it the 1934 NFA. (Man, I wish we still had the 1934 law.) Or people claiming ATF is prevented from collecting the tax, so that's why they're banned.

gunderwood wrote:Simple. The big donors for the NRA don't want it to be. They can afford the machine gun prices costing more than any of my automobiles and if such a ban were struck down they would lose a huge investment. Basically, their $10k+ machine guns would be worth no more and probably a lot less than a NIB one after the ban is struck down. Imagine having a original Colt M16 worth tens of thousands is suddenly worth $800 because anyone who wants to pay the tax can buy a new one for that much. Things are so bad that Hollywood asked for and got a special provision allowing them to purchase new machine guns in that ATF "reform" bill the NRA championed last year. No, the NFA is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

I see this conspiracy theory from time to time. Speaking as someone who's got some measure of time and money in transferables, it's bull. Other than a couple of douchebags - investors, not collectors or shooters, but the people who bought when Forbes said it was a good investment - virtually every shooter and collector wants the ban lifted so we can have new stuff. Yeah, I, and people like me, would take a bath on the repro stuff (tubes, sideplates, conversions) - but we could have things that can't be bought now for any price, like SCARs, M249s, M4s, all the new toys that are forbidden, plus old stuff that's become insanely expensive due to rarity before 1986, like RPDs and Brens. That's worth it to me, and everyone else who actually shoots these guns.

It's good for shooters, dealers, manufacturers, everyone but the investors who are a minority of a minority. Those types don't belong to the NRA. The NRA doesn't fight for us because they, as an institution, do not like us or think we're worth fighting for. Us machinegunners are the crazy uncle locked in the attic of the gun culture. Reducing it to a numbers game, why fight for a constituency that numbers maybe 25k in total, many of whom are not members because they're pissed about being sold out repeatedly?