Question about 1934 NFA... why?

[Dionysusigma]

"The law" is not by definition ethical, just, common sense or understandable with respect to motive. It is simply the trigger point for government to use its legal monopoly on force.

Land of freedom and democracy, indeed.

 

[dolanp]

Well the government got stupid, banned alcohol, gave birth to organized crime, saw a rise in violence, finally figured out that they were messing things up, reversed prohibition, and decided to get rid of those pesky guns as well.

Compare to present day with drugs and guns in general. Thanks to the drug underground and the rate of shootings among gangland thugs they want to keep taking our guns away until they're all gone (that is, only the thugs they are targetting still have them).

 

[Phantom Warrior]

trying to figure out why governments put certain regulations in place is like trying to find the last digit in pie....pracitcally impossible

I'm so sorry. If you aren't a math nerd, skip this post.

In point of fact, pi is irrational. (That's the number you use to figure out area or diameter of a circle, approximately 3.14159265358979323). Which means that there is no way to express it exactly as a decimal, terminating or repeating. You could sit down with a formula that spits out digits of pi and it would keep on going, without repeating or terminating, forever. So figuring out the last digit of pi isn't practically impossible, it IS impossible.

Which just proves your point about the futility of figuring out government regulation, I guess. Again, I'm sorry if I bored you all to tears. I'm about to get a B.S. in math and am a certified nerd (I had those 17 digits of pi memorized), so I had to say it. We now return to your regular, interesting thread.

 

[Zundfolge]

1934 was the year after the repeal of Prohibition, and all of the fruits of that policy (the rise of organized crime, specifically). Al Capone had just been arrested, and Chicago gangland violence via full-auto Thompsons and shotguns concealed under overcoats was the hottest story around. It was the heyday of Bonnie & Clyde, what with their sawed off 1918 BAR and all.

There were a LOT of reasons for the Feds to look at the situation and think that the NFA might prove to be a useful tool in the fight against all of this. After all, they were experiencing a new type of crime with which they simply didn't have any experience in countering.

Yep ... thats the line the government has used for some time.

The real reason for the NFA is because during Prohibition the Federal, State and Local governments hired a TON of Agents to enforce Prohibition (guys like Elliott Ness), and with its end they would be unemployed.

In addition, because of the depression there was a massive growth in Communist/Socialist movements in the US ... there where riots over food and big rallies held by Socialists and Communists. There was a lot of concern over a Soviet style violent Communist revolution (some wealthy people even mounted machinegun nests on their homes).

So the NFA (like all other forms of gun control) was not devised as a way to control criminals, but to prevent us serfs from having the means to "refresh the tree of liberty".