An idea, post Heller

[Gifted]

Bear with me, I'm being optimistic here, and skipping a lot of legalese that would go into a polished bill, while

Whereas the Supreme Court has held the Second amendment to be an individual right, this historical opinion supports this decision, quoting various stuff, Congress enacts a Second Amendment Conservation Act to:

Bring gun laws into line with the decision of the court, while maintaining the intent of those laws, and permit the court to see to other matters--

Allow for review of previous cases to correct violations of these rights--

Preserve private property in regards to this right--

And allow the Secretary of Defense total control over research done for military purposes(or some such, detail later).

First paragraph--Remove sporting purposes clause, and any and all bans on the import of weapons, all that fun stuff. Keep in mind NICS and some other stuff will not be going(not with this, anyway), it's just too well supported, so don't mess with it. There might be some preemption here too, since the purpose is to save time challening all these laws in court.

Second paragraph modifies what's staying. This is mostly the NFA--

The $200 stamp is reduced to $50. This applies to everything except AOW and as covered in the next section. Costs of licenses to manufacture and sell and stuff relating to that is here too. Do you think it would work to get rid of forms to manufacture, only tax is on transfer? focusing on commerce, and all that.​

Destructive devices are divided, creating a new category-ammunition and expendables. This separates grenades, projectiles, etc. from the launchers of such. One tax stamp can now cover a "lot," being defined for this purpose as any group of ammo or "expendables" having the same lot number, or consecutive serial numbers. This means a crate of grenades has just one stamp(or a more expensive device, like an RPG with serial numbers in a row), rather than one for each freakin' one, making practice with HE more affordable. It would say you can't sell to anyone that doesn't have the requisite DOT requirements, license to transport and such. This would be worded so that a shenanigan like the attempted reclassification of gunpowder a few months back can't happen on the agency level, congress would have to do it. There's some more work that has to be done with that, but that's the gist of it, letting you buy and transport reasonably is the point.​

The .50 cal limit is gone(if sporting purposes doesn't kill it already), I'm not sure if there should be a replacement limit for DDs just with bore diameter.​

Silencers are now class I, with the yada about hearing protection and stuff. Maybe we can completely deregulate them, but class I is a starting point.​

And basically anything else that can be done, within reason.

Paragraph two talks about criminal case appeals and record clearing, if there's an easy way to streamline all those 1/2" too short shotguns and rifles and stuff. This would probably also cover making guns protected, meaning civil forfeiture doesn't apply, you can only take someone's guns away if they're convicted. Some more stuff here that I don't know enough to go into about making all that happen.

The last paragraph provides the DOD with the ability to give out waivers, making a researcher completely independent of BATFE. All they can do is verify that a gun is on the waiver books. If it is, they can't do anything about it(I'd say they'd have to have the DOD come in and take custody of that property if necessary), they only have jurisdiction over NFA registered items. This means that DOD can let smaller guys help do research, without the expense of having to license and register everything. It HAS to be on the waiver though, or you have to tax stamp it. The waiver specifies what it's for, and when it expires(more legalese to work out), everything either has to be registered, or sold to the DOD. When the military puts out a request, it has to offer a waiver to everyone who puts in a concept or whatever. If Joe Blow has an idea for a machine gun, and convinces the gov to help him develop his idea, he gets a waiver so he can work without having to worry about all the NFA and BATFE paperwork. This idea most definitely needs more work.

 

[Blackbeard]

You might get more votes for it if you raise the NFA tax to $500 and reopen the registry. Sell it as a deficit-reduction bill.

 

[GhostlyKarliion]

how about we drop the entire NFA? to quote a certian justice, "What is reasonable about a total ban?"

actually, what is reasonable about any ban?

I'm surely going to be pushing all three of my congress critters if things go the right way.

 

[Henry Bowman]

And allow the Secretary of Defense total control over research done for military purposes(or some such, detail later).

I don't follow what you mean here. The NFA made it very difficult for independant inventors (like Maxim and Browning) to continue to advance the design of military weaponry. The last thing we want to do is make it even worse by giving DoD total control over R&D. What did you mean by this provision?

 

[Gifted]

What did you mean by this provision?

I probably phrased that particular sentence wrong.

Currently, you need the manufacturing license and stuff to make DDs and other goodies the military buys. This would give the DOD the ability to give a small business a waiver with a contract(or even without) that allows it to bypass the NFA etc. as well as the red tape in BATFE. A small business might have the idea you want, but not the money to deal with the red tape.

Take the recent DARPA challenges for building robot vehicles. Many of the teams were from smaller companies and even hobbyists. If you had a competition for a new rifle, people like this probably wouldn't' be able to deal with the red tape currently needed to manufacture select fire weapons and DDs. The waiver is a way past that, eliminating the NFA paperwork and taxes on the research equipment.