Origins Of The NFA

Making and apprehending Criminals through the tax laws.

- Alexandria Kincaid

A hand-processed, paper-intensive, firearm background check system that costs Americans millions of dollars annually to implement is no doubt an archaic way of doing business in the year 2017. But few, if any, people have ever suggested that government processes are the model of efficiency. Unfortunately, while change may be on the horizon, it’ll take much effort and many years to see improvement for the simple reason that far too many people still agree with the following statement:

“A sawed-off shotgun is one of the most dangerous and deadly weapons. A machine gun, of course, ought never to be in the hands of any private individual. There is not the slightest excuse for it, not the least in the world, and we must, if we are going to be successful in this effort to suppress crime in America, take these machine guns out of the hands of the criminal class.” Testimony of Attorney General Homer Stille Cummings as recorded in National Firearms Act: Hearings on H.R. 9066 Before the H. Comm. On Ways & Means, 73rd Cong 1 (1934) [NFA Hearing].

“Predatory criminals.” “A very serious national emergency.” “The armed underworld.” These dramatic emotion-provoking descriptions uttered by Attorney General Cummings in 1934 during the first few minutes of his Congressional testimony were designed to sway Congress into passing national gun control through America’s tax code. As the spokesperson for the Department of Justice, his focus on addressing crime by restricting and inconveniencing law-abiding Americans hardly differed from the gun-control rhetoric disgorged by today’s anti-gun politicians. In his effort to “sell it,” Cummings blatantly declared that law-abiding Americans needed to endure the inconvenience of the law to allow the government to deal with criminals.