Don Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > My understanding is that Congress' rationale for the Gun Control Act of > 1968 was actually > "to provide for better control of the interstate traffic in firearms". See > http://www.atf.gov/pub/fire-explo_pub/gca.htm . > > It also seems to me that the wording of the 1934 National Firearms Act > (control of automatic weapons)is based largely on Congress' power to > regulate commerce and to tax.
Exactly. NFA34 Hearings before Ways & Means contain explicit statements to this effect--that Congress lacked the authority to ban machine guns, and they could achieve their desired goal only by taxing it. At those hearings, members of the committee and Roosevelt Administration officials were explicit that NFA34 was modeled on the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914, which also did it based on interstate commerce authority. Police powers might be a legitimate way for states to impose mandatory registration, and Congress might use something similar to the tax model of NFA34 to achieve the same result with all guns. (Remember that the original proposal for NFA34 included handguns in the same structure as machine guns and sawed-off long guns.) What stopped including handguns was pressure from constitutents, and concerns by members of Congress, some of whom were regularly in the habit of carrying guns in their cars, and were concerned about the consequences of imposing the NFA34 licensing scheme. Clayton E. Cramer [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.claytoncramer.com Being a citizen of the Republic is not a spectator sport.
