ctdonath
Member
[The movie] "The Corporation" ... begins with the unsettling information that, under the law, a corporation is not a thing but a person. The U.S. Supreme Court so ruled, in a decision based, bizarrely, on the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. That was the one that guaranteed former slaves equal rights. The court ruling meant corporations were given the rights of individuals in our society. They are free at last.
- Roger Ebert
The author (his personal politics aside) brings up a fascinating fact: legally, corporations are people. This point raises an interesting, if perverse, method for legally approaching the NFA "CLEO signoff" problem (among other related legal absurdities).
A carefully orchestrated assault on the "CLEO signoff" problem was launched by the 1934 Group several years ago: a wide variety of upstanding citizens, unable to get the required signature (that of a local Chief Law Enforcement Officer, who is not legally obligated to comply appropriately with the signoff request) on BATFE Form 4 paperwork to obtain NFA weapons (machineguns, silencers, etc.) sued for the elimination of the "CLEO signoff" requirement. The attempt failed, with the judge concocting obscure and strange excuses for RKBA being left to the whims of bureaucrats.
Perversely, one need not obtain the "CLEO signoff" - IF one officially registers a corporation which, as a legal entity, files the Class III paperwork and takes official ownership of the NFA weapons. Only as officers or designees of the company may a citizen then keep and bear NFA arms. Yes, a citizen needs permission from a bureaucrat (who has no obligation to grant consent) to fully exercise RKBA, but a corporation does not.
Which leads us to the Robert Ebert quote (ironic, him being a flaming liberal). If a corporation is a legal person, then surely an actual person could sue under the 14th Amendment for equal treatment under the law, to wit: submit and have approved an NFA Form 4 request to pay the NFA tax and take ownership of a Class III weapon without seeking the approval of unapproving CLEOs, just as may happen for a corporation (that being a legal person). For the "CLEO signoff" requirement to stand creates an unequal-under-the-law rift between two legal classes of persons, which is intolerable under the 14th Amendment.
Thoughts?