The Coming NFA Threat To The Second Amendment

United States – -(AmmoLand.com)- A series of recent court rulings have held promise or overturing onerous infringements on our Second Amendment rights. If the rulings of Judge Roger Benitez are upheld, standard capacity magazine bans and semiauto bans could be a thing of the past. That’s a good thing.

If you think, though, that anti-Second Amendment extremists will just throw up their hands and give up their assaults on our rights, you’d be very mistaken. We know that anti-Second Amendment extremists have threatened to pack the court – see Sheldon Whitehouse’s brief in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New York for one particularly brazen example of this thuggery – and they may well pursue that course of action. But there is another option they could exercise to get around pro-Second Amendment rulings by the Supreme Court, and it is one that Second Amendment supporters should take seriously.

That option would be to greatly expand what is covered under the provisions of the National Firearms Act. This measure is best known as the law that covers fully automatic firearms as well as short-barreled shotguns and other items. Efforts like the Home Defense and Competitive Shooting Act and the Hearing Protection Act to remove various items from the scope of the National Firearms Act have been covered on Ammoland before.

The reason why anti-Second Amendment extremists might turn to the NFA is understandable – the procedure to own anything covered under the National Firearms Act is lengthy and cumbersome, to put it mildly. It’s not as invasive as the procedure that the Sabika Sheikh Firearm Licensing and Registration Act would impose on those who wish to exercise their Second Amendment rights, but that is not saying much. The fact is, there have been efforts to expand the reach of the National Firearms Act.

One notorious effort was in 2000. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) introduced S 2099, which targeted handguns. Reed’s legislation not only would have required registration, but also a $50 tax for each handgun manufactured and a transfer tax. In addition, while tax records are normally to be kept private, Reed’s bill would have allowed handgun registration information to be shared with federal, state, and local law enforcement. A second effort targeted all semiautomatic firearms, and it was from a former friend. In the wake of the Parkland shooting, Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) introduced S 2475, the BUMP Act.

Neither of these bills got out of committee, but Second Amendment supporters should not let their guard down. The fact is that the National Firearms Act is not going away any time soon, even with favorable rulings in the cases winding their way through the courts. To ensure that the National Firearms Act doesn’t become a tool for infringing on our rights, Second Amendment supporters should support NRA-ILA and NRA-PVF to ensure that the anti-Second Amendment extremists who control the House, Senate, and the White House are defeated at the ballot box in the 2022 and 2024 elections.

About Harold Hutchison

Writer Harold Hutchison has more than a dozen years of experience covering military affairs, international events, U.S. politics and Second Amendment issues. Harold was consulting senior editor at Soldier of Fortune magazine and is the author of the novel Strike Group Reagan. He has also written for the Daily Caller, National Review, Patriot Post, Strategypage.com, and other national websites.