My friend Ed was a United States Marine. Some would say he was an \u201cex-Marine,\u201d but I\u2019m not sure these guys are ever \u201cex-\u201d Marines.<\/p>\n
Ed lived in Connecticut. It\u2019s my birthplace, but a state I left long ago. If I needed to be reminded why, my recent conversation with Ed\u2019s widow would have done it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf my husband hadn\u2019t died, I would never have known about this, and I would have become a criminal on January first,\u201d Ann says.<\/p>\n
Ed was active in the program of the federal Director of Civilian Marksmanship, back in the 1980s, helping law-abiding citizens acquire surplus government combat rifles \u201cat cost\u201d — a proper role for the federal government, which is required to \u201carm the militia\u201d (and we\u2019re still waiting for our quad 50s, by the way.) <\/p>\n
He and Ann both filled out the forms and shot to qualify for one of the rifles. Ed purchased an M-1 Garand; Ann chose the little M-1 carbine, \u201cbecause I\u2019m short,\u201d for $165.<\/p>\n
The rifles arrived. The magazine was removed from the carbine. Then both rifles and the magazine went into the safe, where they\u2019ve been ever since — 28 years.<\/p>\n
But after Ed died, Ann had to have his firearms appraised \u201cfor probate.\u201d<\/p>\n
The subject of the new state law — passed in the aftermath of the school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary — came up as she was having Ed\u2019s rifles appraised. \u201cYou\u2019d think the state of Connecticut would have mailed me a little card or something, saying you own this carbine, which has now been declared an \u2018assault rifle\u2019 and you have to register it. But they didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weirdly, Ed\u2019s Garand — a far more powerful semi-automatic rifle with its 30.06 cartridge, capable of aimed fire out to 800 yards and of firing nearly as many rounds per minute as the carbine (if you keep feeding it eight-round clips) \u2013 need not be registered, because it doesn\u2019t have a \u201cdetachable magazine.\u201d But Ann\u2019s little World-War-Two-surplus semiautomatic carbine with its little pistol-caliber rounds, she discovered, had now been re-defined under this panicked state legislation as an \u201cassault weapon, because the magazine holds 20 rounds or whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not only did she have to register the rifle, she had to register the magazine separately.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo if you had six magazines, they\u2019d each have to be registered separately?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think so, that\u2019s what the gun owners were saying. But the magazines don\u2019t have serial numbers, so how would they have known?\u201d<\/p>\n
A lot of people just ignore such registration schemes, I pointed out, figuring they\u2019re only a precursor to seizure. Law-abiding citizens are actually more likely to be jailed for filling out the forms wrong than some scofflaw who stays \u201coutside the system.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought of that, but I remember Ed talking about people who didn\u2019t register their machine guns when that came in\u201d (the National Firearms Act, 1934.) \u201cAfter that they couldn\u2019t sell them or transfer them, they were contraband, so what were they worth? At first I thought I was going to sell the guns by December, but then I thought \u2018They\u2019re investments. Why should I have to sell them?\u2019 It just frosts my patootie that they think I\u2019m Adam Lanza. If this law was going to save a single child\u2019s life that would be one thing, but it\u2019s not.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ann downloaded the registration forms Online. Then she needed to go down to the Town Clerk\u2019s office to have her signature notarized. She no longer had duplicates of the money orders she used to buy her rifle from the DCM in 1986, so she had to have a separate affidavit notarized in which she set forth the facts of her legal purchase. \u201cThen it said something about fingerprints so I figured I\u2019d have to traipse over to the police station to get fingerprinted, but she said, \u2018No, we can take your thumb-print here,\u2019 so at least I was spared that trip. But I\u2019m so mad I just want to spit,\u201d Ann says. \u201cMy gun was legal on December 31st and it would have been illegal on January First.\u201d (Some sources say Jan. 4.)<\/p>\n
She mailed in all this rigmarole on Dec. 29, \u201cand I\u2019m glad I did. You know how people wait till the last minute? Well a lot of people mailed in their forms on December 31st. But the post office decided to close at noon on December 31st, so about half of the forms mailed on the 31st got postmarked January second, and the state said they weren\u2019t going to accept them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow did that finally work out?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t know if they have worked it out. They\u2019re calling it an \u2018amnesty,\u2019 asking if people who mailed in their forms that afternoon should get an \u2018amnesty.\u2019 Then, right after I got my affidavits notarized, I asked where I had to go to change my voter registration.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were at the right place.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was. The town clerk is a Republican. She said \u2018You want to change your party affiliation?\u2019 and I said \u2018Yes, I\u2019m going to join your party,\u2019 and she smiled. I\u2019m a Social Justice Catholic so I\u2019ve been a Democrat all my life, but this gun stuff, on top of this stomp-on-religion stuff, where they\u2019re taking away people\u2019s religious freedoms, I just can\u2019t stand it anymore. These are our most precious rights that people fought for.\u201d<\/p>\n
Including a few Marines I\u2019ve known.<\/p>\n
# # #<\/p>\n
In 1991 in the Rock Island Armory case the federal District Court dismissed an indictment under the National Firearms Act for failing to register a machine gun where federal law precluded registration. In doing so, the court explained that \u201cSince its passage in 1934, the registration, taxation, and other requirements of the National Firearms Act (“NFA”) have been upheld by the courts under the power of Congress to raise revenue. . . . Congress has no enumerated power to require registration of firearms. However, since registration of firearms may assist in the collection of revenue, Congress passed the National Firearms Act in 1934 pursuant to its power to tax.”<\/p>\n
In 1937, in Sonzinsky v. United States, the Supreme Court upheld the NFA because it \u201cis not attended by an offensive regulation, and since it operates as a tax, it is within the national taxing power.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is nonsense on its face. If the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms believed its job was maximizing revenues from this tax, it would encourage the importation or new manufacture of hundreds of thousands of machine guns each year, setting up drive-through windows in mini-malls where purchasers could hand over their $200 in exchange for a registration certificate in less time than it takes to get a burger and fries.<\/p>\n
Instead, as part of the purposely difficult and intimidating process to register a machine gun or anything similar, ATF rules have long required individuals, but not legal entities like trusts, to obtain a \u201claw enforcement certificate\u201d from their local Chief Law Enforcement Officer (CLEO), such as a sheriff or police chief, in which the top cops are asked to certify that the applicant is known to be an upstanding character who\u2019d never do anything bad with a machine gun.<\/p>\n
But ever since the Supreme Court ruled (quite properly) in 1997 in Printz v. United States that such chief law enforcement officers cannot be compelled by the federal government to perform federal functions like firearm background checks \u2013 especially in an era when any lawyer will tell you never to sign anything guaranteeing that ANYONE is safe and reliable and will never misbehave — many top cops now refuse to sign these machine gun \u201cpermission slips.\u201d<\/p>\n
Back in 2009, the National Firearms Act Trade and Collectors Association asked the ATF to get rid of this requirement that people wanting to legally buy machine guns get a \u201cpermission slip\u201d from their local police chief or sheriff.<\/p>\n
Instead, the ATF decided late last year not merely to keep the \u201cpermission slip\u201d requirement for individuals, but to extend that mandate to all \u201cresponsible persons\u201d of legal entities \u2013 which critics warn could include \u201ca newborn baby who is one of several beneficiaries\u201d of a trust set up to hold a machine gun.<\/p>\n
John Pierce, co-founder of OpenCarry.org, responds: \u201cThe ATF does not have the authority under the NFA’s taxing powers to shut off Americans’ end run around CLEO certification\u201d because the ATF’s stated purpose of its proposed rule change is \u201cto ensure that prohibited persons do not gain access to NFA firearms,” an exercise of general criminal power not delegated to the ATF by Congress. Additionally, ATF\u2019s proposed rule will necessarily impede the transfer of NFA items and therefore hinder the collection of taxes — the only authorized purpose of the NFA — \u201cbecause transferors will be substantially less able to find transferees who can obtain CLEO certification.”<\/p>\n
Instead, Pierce urges the ATF to simply repeal the permission-slip requirement for individuals, in which case \u201cuse of legal entity ownership arrangements for NFA items will decline without hindering the collection of taxes under the NFA.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s indeed what they should do. But since they won\u2019t — because they\u2019re lying about what they\u2019re up to in the first place — the real solution is to repeal the National Firearms Act and shut down the ATF, entirely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My friend Ed was a United States Marine. Some would say he was an \u201cex-Marine,\u201d but I\u2019m not sure these guys are ever \u201cex-\u201d Marines. Ed lived in Connecticut. It\u2019s my birthplace, but a state I left long ago. If I needed to be reminded why, my recent conversation with Ed\u2019s widow would have done […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,17,12,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2nd-amendment","category-big-brother","category-common-defense","category-self-defense"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-ul","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1881"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1882,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1881\/revisions\/1882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}