Petition to repeal the hughes amendment

[Flooganbargan]

Hey guys, I know i'm new here, but me and a few others from a certain other weapons board are going around trying to get this thing signed with 5,000 signatures by the end of this month. We're trying to repeal the hughes amendment(which was not correctly passed in the first place). all we're asking is for you to sign the petition and pass it on to other gun lovers. Here's the link:

https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/%21/petition/push-congress-repeal-hughes-amendment-fopa-and-nfa/FWXhjh9s

and here is the video of said amendment being passed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6Mx2UcSEvQ

so that's it really. for those who don't know basically what the hughes amendment does is it closed the machine gun registry in 1986 so no new full autos could be owned / registered legally. causing existing full autos to sky rocket in price


Sign it, pass it on, etc.

 

[TexasBill]

I did not sign the petition. To do so requires registering on the WH site. That would be tacit endorsement of the man in the WH, and I refuse to do that!

Better come up with a better reason for not doing anything; there's nothing about "tacit" or any other kind of approval of the President in the terms and conditions. Also, once you've created the account, you can shut it down anytime you want.

Frankly, I would imagine a lot of the people who have signed so far don't agree with the President on a lot of issues. It's just that they have the courage to petition for a redress of grievances and they want the President to respond.

And, yes, I did sign. I am No. 227.

 

[alsaqr]

The white house cannot repeal the Hughes amendment. Congress can repeal the Hughes amendment: Good luck with that too.

 

[TexasBill]

The goal of the petition is to get the White House to prod Congress into repealing the Hughes Amendment. It's also to get the controversy over the inclusion of the amendment on the public radar screen; I imagine it's been a while since anyone in Washington has given any thought to it.

Those of you hoping for some big change in 2012 haven't been paying any attention to history: the FOPA containing the Hughes Amendment was signed into law by Ronald Reagan, who could have vetoed the bill and told Congress to send it back without the Hughes Amendment, which Congress likely would have done. The Hughes Amendment probably couldn't have been repealed during the administration of George H.W. Bush; Bush thought Americans should only be permitted to own "sporting guns." It's possible it could have been brought up during the second term of the Clinton Administration, after the Republican victories. Hughes wouldn't have even been there to defend it; he lost and was replaced by a Republican, Frank LoBiondo (who still holds the seat) in 1994. LoBiondo, who holds an "A" rating from the NRA, could certainly have moved to correct the action of his predecessor.

But, if the GOP was going to be the savior that so many believe, the Hughes Amendment should absolutely, positively have been repealed during the first six years of the George W. Bush Administration, when Republicans held the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. I'm not even going to try to check all the legislation introduced from 2001 to 2007, so I could easily be wrong, but I sure don't recall a bill to repeal the Hughes Amendment even being introduced.

 

[alsaqr]

But, if the GOP was going to be the savior that so many believe, the Hughes Amendment should absolutely, positively have been repealed during the first six years of the George W. Bush Administration, when Republicans held the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. I'm not even going to try to check all the legislation introduced from 2001 to 2007, so I could easily be worng, but I sure don't recall a bill to repeal the Hughes Amendment even being introduced.

What Texas Bill said.

Those fine congress critters claimed to support our Second Amendment rights but did nothing for us. i can find no evidence that a congressman ever proposed legislation to over-turn the Hughes amendment.

i wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a congressman to propose legislation to open the machingun registry. It could ignite a fire under the anti-gunners and the public backlash could cost us.

 

[TexasBill]

Yes, it's most likely whizzing in the wind, but if you've got a better idea for bringing the topic to Washington's attention, I'd be happy to hear it.

The Census Bureau estimates there are more than 226 million people 20 years of age or more in the United States. 15,000 signatures represents 0.007% of the population. Even if the entire NRA membership signed the petition, that's still only about a half-percent.

Compared to that 226 million, the number of people who actually would benefit from the repeal of the Hughes Amendment (i.e., will buy new full-auto or selective-fire firearms) is vanishingly small. So how are you going to sell the idea to 535 members of Congress and a President? Assuming, of course, that you don't have some very big money behind you.

The online petition idea is brilliant; I don't know why it hasn't been done before. We've had the Internet since Gore invented it, right?

Sure, you can organize a letter-writing campaign; how many letters actually get written? Very few. E-mails are almost a complete waste of time; they're too easily ignored, discarded, or answered with some automated response. You can send an e-mail to most politicians accusing them of being Communist kleptomaniac baby-killers with Oedipal complexes and you'll most likely get a reply thanking you for your support (or a visit from the FBI).

The petition shows that some number of people felt strongly enough about an issue to add their names - to stand up and be counted.

 

[Axctal]

Stupid questions -
1. If Hughes amendment did not pass but still ended up on the book as passed - who committed perjury?
2. Is that person(s) still [criminally] liable?
3. Why attack Hughes and not NFA-34? NFA34+Hughes is similar to "pole tax + refuse to accept tax from blacks".
Plus, obvious (and not so hidden) intent of NFA34 was to prohibit (some) guns. NFA34 never had intent of raising money revenues. Later there was a SCOTUS decision that tax usage for prohibition is unconstitutional, however, NFA34 was never looked into from that angle.

 

[pezo]

Later there was a SCOTUS decision that tax usage for prohibition is unconstitutional, however, NFA34 was never looked into from that angle.

true, this policy was used on other "items" but found to be un constitional. These "other items" were later simply criminalized. The real issue is not enough people either care or are afraid at least on a political level to say they want to legalize machine gun purchases. The media darn near flipped over the assault weaoons ban expiration. One news franchise actually stated that "machine guns were now legal"! Actual quote. I have generally pro gun friends and family who seem to think machine guns are to "evil" to allow civillian ownership as they happily tote their class 1 guns. Its exasperating but I think its worth while to try to eliminate the bill. Especially in regards to old c and r type collectible machine guns that could not be registered but rather destroyed:banghead:

 

[exavid]

I must be missing something here, there are quite a few people in Oregon who have full automatic weapons. They hold a machine gun shoot a couple times a year here at the county range. Oregon doesn't care if you have a silencer or full auto weapon as long as the Federal fee is paid. The feds seem to be taking the $200 bucks and issuing permits so what's with the 'Hughes' amendment?

 

[hso]

http://www.nraila.org/Issues/factsheets/read.aspx?ID=130

BATF interpreted the amendment as a prohibition on the civilian possession of any fully-automatic firearm manufactured after May 19, 1986. The effect of the interpretation has been to "freeze" the number of privately owned fully-automatic firearms at roughly 150,000

You can't purchase a selective fire weapon made after that time so the supply was fixed and the demand drove the price up so that now one of those ~150,000 weapons is worth 20 times what it was before the Hughes amendment was illegally put into legislation. That's why you can't buy anything new and peasants like you can't afford to buy the old stuff (but you're dentist/doctor/attorney/father-in-law can).

 

[CapnMac]

The feds seem to be taking the $200 bucks and issuing permits so what's with the 'Hughes' amendment?

It's a tax stamp that is required for the sale not a permit.

HSO's info sums up Hughes middling neatly.

The only thing missing there, is that Hughes, by forever closing the NFA registry makes all of the unregistered "bring backs" by veterans illegal, and plunges the heirs of those vets (some of whom are vets, too) into potentially deep legal stinky-stuff.

Which will moulder under the political rug until the day the headline comes out "[war]Vet Jailed For [relative's] Machine Gun!"

 

[hso]

CapnMac is right on target and it might be a better option to request the registry be reopened for the heirs of the "Greatest Generation" to make Dad's/Grandad's bring back legal instead of tossing a piece of family history into the scrap bin or having a war hero prosecuted by an overeager DA for taking a relic of his service out back and shooting it one last time before he passes on.

Having another "amnesty" and the registry reopened would be a stepping stone to killing Hughes.

 

[Mike OTDP]

It's not just unregistered bring-backs. It's the registered bring-backs whose paperwork is missing. ATF admits an error rate around 50% in paperwork for any NFA firearm registered prior to 1968...and the World War II bring-backs were sometimes brought in with legitimate but non-standard paperwork.

On top of this, you have the fully papered guns that "vanished" because heirs didn't know what to do with them. Remember, the average non-gun-owner thinks full auto weapons are completely illegal. They would not recognize the paperwork on legally owned NFA if they saw it - but might well be unwilling to simply throw the gun away. There are quite a few guns in the NFA Registry that are papered to people who are quite possibly deceased.

Personally, I like the idea of using the amnesty power to open a "re-registration" period. Send paperwork to all owners of NFA alerting them. Declare an amnesty for 90 days. Any NFA that has paperwork that needs updating can be amended without question (and there are some). Any NFA that could have been legally owned can be registered, no questions asked about where it was.

It would be a fair start.

 

[jmorris]

The goal of the petition is to get the White House to prod Congress into repealing the Hughes Amendment.

We would have better luck of the White House itself doing that than anyone that lives there.

 

[hso]

I think we'd be much better off asking for the amnesty period following Mike OTDP's suggestion. We'd use the argument that there's a lot of lost/misplaced/misfiled paper out there on registered guns and with so many of the WW vets passing on their legacies could be registered. It would be difficult to argue against this since it actually is putting guns without records into the system instead of leaving them outside the system. Once the number of the firearms in the hands of average tax paying voting citizens was known and demonstrates that these are not "weapons of mass destruction" it would make arguing against Hughes easier on the emotional level as well as challenging it on the legal.

 

[Mike OTDP]

Yup. I also think the wording has to be very carefully considered. It's not an "amnesty", it's a "re-registration". The amnesty power of GCA '68 is merely the mechanism to do this.

There are known issues with the NFA Registry, especially with the older guns. We're not allowing people who have knowingly committed crimes to get away with it, we're getting the paperwork straight. The fact that we are assuming that a machine gun that could have been legally owned is legally owned is merely a reflection of the presumption of innocence that pervades all American jurisprudence.