What led to the enactment of the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986?

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AlexanderA said:
OK, then when is the NRA going to rectify its mistake by really pushing hard for the repeal of the Hughes Amendment?
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Simple.

When are the majority of gun owners THAT ARE VOTERS going to pressure their Senators and Representatives to pass a bill repealing it?

Blaming the NRA is a cop-out.

It is also incredibility naive' to believe in todays toxic political environment that a bill would be given serious consideration. Image the damage both in terms of number of people killed and injured and to the image of guns and guns owners if Paddock had a full-auto machine gun or two or three in his hotel room? (He was rich enough to afford several if they had been available).
 
Elkins45 said:
I had just graduated from college in 1986. The thought of scraping together $800 for an M16 and the tax stamp was almost laughable to me at that time.
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Pre-1986, there was a restriction on M16 sales -- but it didn't come from the government. Colt had a policy that it would sell only one rifle and one carbine to each SOT dealer, ostensibly for law enforcement demo purposes. To order more, the dealer had to prove that the first ones were sold to LE agencies. This created an artificial scarcity for Colt guns. Other makers filled the void by converting semiautomatic guns. This is why Colt M16's go for $25,000 today, while Sendras are probably $5,000 less.

The escalation in prices did not happen suddenly after FOPA. In fact, there was a temporary glut as manufacturers took advantage to the 30-day lag between passage of the bill and its signing by Reagan to work nonstop churning out MG's. Prices started becoming astronomical 5 to 10 years after passage of FOPA.
 
BSA1 said:
When are the majority of gun owners THAT ARE VOTERS going to pressure their Senators and Representatives to pass a bill repealing it?
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You have to look at the legislative process. Something like the MG registry is a technical issue. The general public has virtually no impact on Congress regarding technical issues. Lobbyists do. If the NRA lobbyists would take legislators aside and start explaining the MG issue, it would have tremendous impact. Things like this are done quietly. (This is how we get 1,000-page tax bills.)
 
AlexanderA said:
Ronald Reagan was a passive actor in all of this. He would have vetoed the bill if the NRA had asked him to do so. McClure-Volkmer was not an Administration bill.
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You have the most interesting twisted view on history.

On March 30, 1981 John Hinckley shot President Reagan and three other people (James Brady, Secret Service Agent Tim McCarthy and Police Officer Thomas K. Delahanty),

The FOPA was introduced on January 3, 1985 by Senator James McClure. It was signed into by President Reagan law on May 19, 1986.

I bolded the dates to point out to you that the FOPA was introduced almost three years and passed into law over four years after President Reagan was shot. Given the length of time between being shot and the law working it's way through Congress President Reagan could have easily stopped it from even making it out of committee and certainly vetoed it.

Passive...hardly in my books.
 
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AlexanderA said:
You have to look at the legislative process. Something like the MG registry is a technical issue. The general public has virtually no impact on Congress regarding technical issues. Lobbyists do. If the NRA lobbyists would take legislators aside and start explaining the MG issue, it would have tremendous impact. Things like this are done quietly. (This is how we get 1,000-page tax bills.)
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Obviously you have never heard the term "All politics are local."

What makes you think that the majority of gun owners (and not to mention general public) want full-auto firearms deregulated?
 
BSA1 said:
Blaming the NRA is a cop-out.
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Not really a cop-out. If the NRA is the most powerful gun lobby, then they should be responsible at least in part. In other words, do something with all the membership/revenue.

The problem with the toxic political climate is that they flip-flop according to whichever way the wind is blowing.

I'm not sure who is truly advocating for the 2nd Amendment anymore versus advocating for themselves.

Regardless, of the NRA and politics, the 2nd Amendment just keeps getting chipped away at.

With all the recent mass shootings and the response to those shootings, the outlook for the 2nd Amendment does not look good.

Therefore, just like the Hughes Amendment, if there are more huge compromises, we will never get those rights back either.

I don't expect the NRA or anyone to perform miracles regarding the 2nd Amendment, but some honesty and transparency would be nice.

Maybe the problem is that now guns are too political.The gun issue is too polarized.
 
BSA1 said:
What makes you think that the majority of gun owners (and not to mention general public) want full-auto firearms deregulated?
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The point is that opening the MG registry would not deregulate MG's. Quite the opposite -- more of them would be brought under the regulatory umbrella. Plenty of MG's exist off the books today.
 
cheygriz said:
I know that I sure get tired of people who call themselves "pro-gun" constantly dissing the NRA simply because it can't perform miracles and give them anything and everything they want.
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I'm not against the NRA. I want a better NRA, and that means replacing the current management.
 
While the NRA flaws are interesting, that's turning away from the historical topic. Reopening the registry if it relates to the history is somewhat on topic. Let's refocus a bit.
 
OK, here's the argument to be made to people on the fence, and even to the antigunners: registered machine guns are tightly controlled, whereas unregistered machine guns are not. By having a closed registry, you encourage people to make illegal machine guns, or workarounds such as bump stocks.
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I think it's pretty obvious to everyone, including anti-gunners, that people who would be willing to register their machineguns are not going to be the same people who will make illegal ones. The registry is not at all a concern for those willing to make illegal machineguns.

Bump stocks might be a slightly better argument, though still not a good one. People who see bump stocks as a problem are, in general, FAR more interested in banning bump stocks and further regulating semi-autos to deal with the "problem" than in making machineguns cheaper and easier to own. I can't imagine anything but incredulous laughter would result from proposing to an anti-gunner that making machineguns easier and cheaper to own is a good solution for reducing the proliferation of bump stocks.

I have to admit that there's strong logic to their position. If the perceived problem is too much firepower available to the general public, making it easier and cheaper to get firepower is a logically problematic response.
Why isn't the NRA openly making the case to the public?
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Because the public has almost exactly zero interest in making machineguns cheaper and easier to own. As I said earlier, even the gun community is divided on this issue.

This is a common problem amongst the more die hard elements of the gun community. Many of these people have a strong tendency to come to believe that their viewpoints are mainstream. This results in loss of touch with reality and in significant misconceptions about general opinion. Reality is that many of their views aren't even mainstream amongst the general gun community, and the general public sees them as laughably radical.

Get away from your core group, ask some people who don't qualify as gun enthusiasts, or maybe who don't even own guns at all, what they think about the idea of making legal machineguns 10 times cheaper and about an unlimited increase in the number of legal machineguns. I'm serious about this--talk to some real-world folks and see what their views are. I think you'll be very surprised.
Something like the MG registry is a technical issue. The general public has virtually no impact on Congress regarding technical issues.
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This is a case in point. To YOU the MG registry is a technical issue. To the general public, keeping machineguns heavily regulated and off the street is an emotional issue and they will interact with their representatives accordingly. The politicians understand this and therefore are not going to be amenable to having discussions with people who start out the conversation with statements like: "The MG registry is a technical issue." because that is not the reality that they must live and work in.
I'm not against the NRA. I want a better NRA...
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Let's be frank. What you want is an NRA that mirrors your views.

1. The NRA has 5 million members, not just one member named AlexanderA. The NRA is going to represent their membership as a whole, not just you.

2. The NRA must still operate in reality. Even if all the members wanted exactly what you do, that still wouldn't give the NRA the power to do whatever it wants to because the NRA doesn't make laws. Congress makes the laws and there are another 320 million NON-NRA members who Congress answers to.
If the NRA is the most powerful gun lobby, then they should be responsible at least in part. In other words, do something with all the membership/revenue.
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This is a false dichotomy. Just because the NRA is the most powerful gun lobby doesn't mean it can pass any legislation it supports or kill any legislation it is against. The NRA still works within the bounds of public opinion--or, if you prefer--within the bounds of Congress' perception of public opinion.

Remember, the NRA still has only about 5 million members--less than 2% of the population. They not only have to keep those 5 million members happy--and as I've mentioned a couple of times now, not even all of those members would support easier access to machineguns--they also are restricted by what Congress feels it can/can't get away with.
 
AlexanderA said:
OK, here's the argument to be made to people on the fence, and even to the antigunners: registered machine guns are tightly controlled, whereas unregistered machine guns are not. By having a closed registry, you encourage people to make illegal machine guns
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Really?
By and large people are law abiding. The only ones that would seek to make an illegal machine gun would be those ignorant of Federal law and criminals.





or workarounds such as bump stocks. Bump stocks would never have been an issue if reasonably-priced machine guns had been available, even considering the hoops to be jumped through. Pre-1986, nobody was thinking about FA workarounds.
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No kidding.
But firearm regulations have a peculiar way of causing innovation. If it wasn't for the hi cap magazine ban we likely wouldn't have seen the plethora of pocket pistols we now have....and those pocket pistols helped make concealed carry much easier.

In fact, the bump stock controversy provides the perfect opportunity for re-examining the MG registry. We saw a hint of this in the NRA's formal response to the bump stock regulation comment period, in which they mentioned an amnesty. This response is known in the gun community, but hasn't gotten any larger press. Why isn't the NRA openly making the case to the public?
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Maybe because the NRA knows what battles can be won. Just for giggles, how many US senators can you name that have voiced support SPECIFICALLY for opening the machine gun registry? For the same reason that the Hearing Protection Act died once again few politicians want their name attached to evil machine guns or silencers used by assassins.
 
dogtown tom said:
By and large people are law abiding. The only ones that would seek to make an illegal machine gun would be those ignorant of Federal law and criminals.
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What I am trying to do is frame an argument for opening the registry. The antis want gun control -- registries, the whole works. Tell them we already have it in the form of the NFA registry. How can they object to expanding a registry?

There are plenty of underground machine guns that could be "brought in from the cold." I remember the 1968 amnesty. (I was a 23-year-old 3rd-year law student at the time.) The talk at the gun shops from some people who "may have had" machine guns (mostly WW2 bringbacks) was that they were not going to take advantage of the amnesty, fearing a future confiscation. Time has proved them wrong, but the guns are still out there.

There are people who are well aware of the federal law, but still violate it. (We're not talking about career criminals here.) As long as they keep a low profile, they're not likely to get caught. Their heirs, however, will have a problem.
 
Their heirs, however, will have a problem.
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The lady who used to work in the office next to me had an uncle (Vietnam vet) that died. When cleaning out his closet they found an M16. I'm not sure if it was stolen USGI or a home brew, but it definitely had a happy switch according to her. They called the State Police, who referred them to an ATF field office. A couple of agents came to the house and took it away.

In the grand scheme of things, that's not much of a problem.
 
What I am trying to do is frame an argument for opening the registry. The antis want gun control -- registries, the whole works. Tell them we already have it in the form of the NFA registry. How can they object to expanding a registry?
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You have to frame an argument that makes sense to the people you're intending it to sway.

You can say it any way you want, but you have to understand they are not blithering idiots. Saying you want to "expand a registry" might sound good on the surface, but it's totally unrealistic to believe that increasing the number of legal/transferrable machineguns in public ownership and reducing the cost of legal machineguns by an order of magnitude is going to sound good to anti-gunners--no matter how it is initially stated.

I'm sure that there are many anti-gunners who would like to "expand the registry" in the sense of adding new classes of firearms to the list of those that must be registered. I can't imagine even a single anti-gunner who would be amenable to "expanding the registry" in the sense of increasing the number of legal machineguns in private ownership.
There are plenty of underground machine guns that could be "brought in from the cold."
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The people you're trying to convince want to make currently legal semi-autos illegal--why on earth would you think they would go for the idea of legalizing "plenty" of full-autos that are currently illegal?
 
The antis aren't the main problem.

Joe Average, who doesn't care one way or the other about gun laws is the guy we need to get on our side.

No argument will sway an anti-gun or a pro-gun person. But old Joe will go along with whoever makes the most reasonable argument. (in his mind)

And old Joe is 50 percent of the voters. Win him over and we get good laws. Piss him off and we get screwed.
 
The antis aren't the main problem.
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The claim was made that the argument in question would be persuasive to the antis. It wouldn't make sense to address such a claim by talking about people who aren't actually antis.

However, that said, it is true that if public opinion can be swayed sufficiently the goal can be achieved. The misconception is that a significant portion of the general public is in favor of making machineguns much more accessible and much cheaper.
 
That's my point, John.
No argument will sway the antis. Trying is a waste of time and effort.

We need to frame the debate toward swaying Joe Average. He can be swayed.
 
JohnKSa said:
why on earth would you think they would go for the idea of legalizing "plenty" of full-autos that are currently illegal?
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Because they exist. Even an anti would prefer to have machine guns on record, than not on record. This could be done by legislatively enabling an amnesty, as a carve-out to 922(o). Remember that GCA '68 had an open-ended authorization of amnesties, which unfortunately was made moot by 922(o). Just put language into 922(o) that nothing in the subsection would preclude GCA amnesties, and then let the Justice Dept. and ATF take it from there.

We are assuming a lot of things about the antis. It would be interesting to have an actual conversation with one, regarding these sorts of technical issues. Unfortunately, because of polarization, the two sides are not speaking to one another.
 
Because they exist. Even an anti would prefer to have machine guns on record, than not on record.
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Antis, by definition, want guns to be illegal, to increase restrictions on firearms, to reduce the number of legal firearms. No matter how one tries to dance around the topic, they are, by definition, not in favor of legalizing guns, decreasing restrictions on firearms or increasing the number of legal firearms because that is exactly the opposite of their agenda.
We are assuming a lot of things about the antis.
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There is no need to assume anything. All that is needed is to understand the primary goals of anti-gunners, and all that is needed to do that is to understand what "anti-gunner" means and to pay attention when they state their goals.

I don't know what to say to a person who honestly believes that anti-gunners are going to be in favor of legalizing currently illegal guns, let alone legalizing currently illegal machineguns. All I can do is refer you back to my comments about losing touch with reality in post #61 of this thread.
It would be interesting to have an actual conversation with one...
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I whole-heartedly agree. I have had many such discussions with anti-gunners and I strongly encourage you to do the same. Pick a genuine anti-gunner (or two or ten) and try to convince him/her/them that making "plenty" of currently illegal machineguns legal and decreasing the price of legal machineguns by an order of magnitude is a good idea and is consistent with anti-gun priorities and goals.

Did you ever try, as suggested earlier in the thread, discussing this topic with real-world members of the general public, who are not gun enthusiasts, or maybe not even gun owners at all, to see if your views make sense to them? I really believe it would help you view this topic from a more realistic perspective.
 
Regarding Antis,

Guns like anything else in life, people fear what they don't know or understand. They look "scary". I've met people that say guns are too dangerous. Guns can do me more harm than good, etc.

In other words, the antis can be converted/transformed if they are exposed, trained , educated in a positive, good way.

For example, as a child I used to be afraid of guns. I didn't grow up in a household where guns where considered necessary. I didn't grow up in a family of hunters. Now, I kind of wish I did. But anyways, when I got older, I became fully aware just how much evil is in the world. In addition, I had enough foresight to be proactive and get into firearms out of necessity of self-defense. Because in this day and age, martial arts isn't enough.

It's very important to do outreach and education. Once they get over the fear of guns, they might even learn to like guns and therefore, see the importance of guns and how it relates to the 2nd Amendment.

They will probably not care one way or the other about machine guns, but it's a start.

I don't need a machine gun, but it sure would be nice to have the option.

Also, my stance is a no compromise approach to the 2nd Amendment, because I'm not comfortable with the 2nd Amendment being chipped away at, because who knows what it will look in 20, 50, or 100 years from now, even though I'm sure it's the minority view and probably not politically realistic.

On the other hand, I'm very thankful that I'm still able to buy guns, ammo and CCW in 2018. Go USA!
 
“Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best”

― Otto von Bismarck

No Compromise is always a loser.

You will never get everything you want. But you can have some of what you want if you allow your adversary some of what he wants.
 
cheygriz said:
No Compromise is always a loser.
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Yes, I know life is about compromises, including guns. But at the same time, it's amazing how fast things can happen when one loses focus and then we are left with a situation of how the heck did we get here. And usually, it's so difficult to go back.
 
We as a society have been forced to compromise from a set of well defined, rational choices, to what we have now. I for one, do not welcome Babylon at my door. Go and do what you want, stay out of my life. I am not perfect, nor do I expect anyone else to be. I know that when I made self destructive decisions, doors closed for me. I have learned from my mistakes. I will close the door between me and you if you make those same choices.
 
It is possible to convince folks not in love with guns that someone could have one for self-defense. They usually will ask that the gun be allowed only after significant background checks and training. They also will feel that the higher capacity guns not be allowed. How many people here say 5 is enough and if you want more, you are nuts.

Also, if one is concerned about opening the registry as antigunners will like this to bring in those gun out of the cold, well - when one is misused in some tragedy - here's the list of those to seize.

We don't see them used in crime as they are limited and reasonably efficacious guns exist for self-defense and sadly crime. It is true that in countries with gun bans we see homemade full auto guns as they are easier to make than semis. Search on thefirearmblog.com for examples.

There was a case on the East Coast were potentially terrorists were thinking of a gun attack and didn't carry it out as they couldn't buy full autos at the store. If the guns were easily available, then some nut would use them. Imagine the fallout if the Las Vegas guy had a legit SAW machine. The moral panic would seize them and I'd bet a contagion effect that would, this time, ban the semis also.

Unintended consequences are dangerous things. The wonderful Heller decision is being quoted as to support the state bans on certain weapons. Kavanaugh supported the machine gun ban. Open the registry and a bad incident takes down everything auto and semi auto.
 
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