I blame the proliferation of AR-15 type "handguns." The AR-15 was never intended to be a handgun. This configuration resulted from the desire to have an SBR without the NFA paperwork. So it's a matter of "what goes around, comes around."
The ATF was never intended to be a law enforcement agency on it's own. It's origins date back to 1886 as a part of Internal Revenue. It was separated in 1972 to handle firearms because of the GCA of '68.
What goes around is that government bureaucracies always continue to grow and encompass more authority. Whether a gun was "intended" from the beginning makes little difference, the Thompson Contender is both a handgun and a rifle, and predates the existence of the AR pistol by quite a margin. Their first product was announced in 1967, and the ability to fire rifle cartridges has always been one of the features.
The Remington XP 100 predates that, it was first offered in 1963 - a bolt action rifle cartridge handgun.
You could shoot real AP ammunition in them years before the ATF was commissioned to regulate it. It was not a threat to society, and still isn't.
The presence of the AR pistol on the market is actually in PROTEST to the stranglehold of regulations reqarding the use of SBR's as outlined in the '34 NFA. None of the elements of that law were a major threat to society, nor were there any major issues with the items regulated. They simply were not a significant source of crime. What was significant was the attitude of those who were enacting it. They were imposing a financial burden on the common taxpayer to keep those items out of their hands - it was a time of extreme economic failure and the working man was taking the brunt of the collapse. Simultaneously both Fascism and Communism were making serious inroads into national governance - which threatened the security of those in power here.
Better to disarm them early than try to disarm them after an uprising. The NFA was simply a measure of prior restraint to prevent insurrection in America. There was plenty of it, banks were being robbed, criminal gangs were controlling the liquor trade in defiance of the law, and the average citizen wasn't too happy with a government that failed to ensure their economic security.
NONE of that was done with any knowledge that the AR pistol would even be invented. And there will ALWAYS be resistance to overbearing government control of the average persons life.
It's why it's so easily said, if you don't like the gun laws in your state, just move. Our forefathers didn't like the gun laws in their home country - you couldn't have one in many cases, and if the government gave you one, your survival rate was diminished while you pursued their adventures against their neighbors. Whether you agreed or not.
Hence the all volunteer army of today. We dislike conscript service so much we abandoned it, a direct result of our heritage from the home country.
It's NOT about the AR pistol, it's about the ATF growing by leaps and bounds in the last 40 years to exert authority, and now they are doing it without the public's approval. They have gone beyond the bounds of acceptable governance, and that will either be addressed by our representatives - or left to fester until a flash point is reached.
We are a long suffering people, but if you tax us too heavily we react. That is EXACTLY the reason this nation exists. Why we tolerate the NFA and ATF at all is only a measure of how much our citizens are ignorant of what they have lost. Like frogs in a pot of water on the stove, they are all warm and cozy for the moment.
Or maybe "what "armor" is. HSO, thank you for your helping me understand this madness. I feel better now.
