Gun Control

The first federal gun control was a 1927 law prohibiting the sale of handguns to private individuals through the mail. This was one of a series of federal laws dealing with vice by protecting the integrity of the U. S. mails. Admittedly, there was something sordid about the federal government's mail service being used to transport weapons to criminals. The law also represented an effort to prevent the gun controls of one state from being circumvented by residents of that state simply obtaining firearms by mail from a manufacturer, wholesaler, or retailer in another state. This ban on so-called mail-order murder had practically no significance since manufacturers could still receive orders by mail and ship handguns to customers via private carriers.

During Franklin Roosevelt's presidency, there were two significant pieces of federal gun control legislation: the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA) and the Federal Firearms Act of 1938 (FFA). During this period both Houses of Congress, as well as the White House, were controlled by the Democrats. The NFA was a response to gangster violence during the 1920s and 1930s, the "tommy-gun era." Competing organized crime groups engaged in spectacular assassinations and shootouts in public, sometimes in broad daylight. The media and the public demanded a government response. The federal government had neither jurisdiction nor organizational capacity to combat these groups, but Congress finally sought to prevent civilian ownership of "gangster type firearms," defined as sawed-off shotguns (rifles and shotguns with barrels shorter then 18 inches), silencers, machine (automatic fire) guns, and submachine guns. Because lawmakers doubted Congress's power to outlaw these gangster weapons outright, the NFA imposed a heavy tax on manufacturers, importers, and dealers of these weapons.

The NFA required "every importer, manufacturer and dealer in firearms" to register its name, principal place of business, and other places of business with its local Internal Revenue Service collector and to pay an annual tax. Importers and manufacturers were taxed $500, dealers $200, and pawnbrokers $300 - very large sums at that time. There was an additional $200 tax on every transfer to an individual. Firearms that had been transferred before the passage of the act could not be transferred again, unless the tax was paid retroactively for prior transfers. The goal was, through taxation, to make these weapons too costly to produce or possess. Owners had to register their gangster weapons within 60 days after the act became effective, and the law made it illegal to transport unregistered weapons covered by the act. Manufacturers and importers were required to affix an identification number on each firearm. The registration system, the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record (NFRTR), exists to this day.

Whether or not there was a significant law-abiding market for these NFA weapons, it was never expected that gangsters would go through the registration process. However, if they were found in possession of an unregistered weapon, the prosecutor could charge an easily provable crime with a 10-year maximum sentence. (The 1986 Firearms Owners' Protection Act outlawed the manufacture and transfer of new FFA weapons.) In hindsight, the NFA is important because it established an upper limit on weaponry suitable for civilian possession.

There has never been an evaluation of the NFA, even as to whether the NFRTR registration for machine guns is accurate and comprehensive. But the use of tommy guns and machine guns by organized crime groups did go out of vogue. The organized crime groups of the 1950s and subsequent decades did not engage in the kind of open warfare that their predecessors did. Instead, they carried out their gangland "hits" with more subtlety. It seems doubtful that this change in organized crime's preferred instrument of assassination resulted from inability to get hold of submachine guns.