Guitargod1985
Member
You are charged with violating 922(o) (in the GCA) not the NFA.
922(o) is in the '86 FOPA not the '68 GCA.
You are charged with violating 922(o) (in the GCA) not the NFA.
Here ya go:
# United States v. Rock Island Armory (1991) [23] - United States District Court ruling one cannot be prosecuted for 1934 National Firearms Act violations for machineguns produced after 1986:
"...since enactment of 18 U.S.C. § 922(o), the Secretary has refused to accept any tax payments to make or transfer a machinegun made after May 19, 1986, to approve any such making or transfer, or to register any such machinegun. As applied to machineguns made and possessed after May 19, 1986, the registration and other requirements of the National Firearms Act, Chapter 53 of the Internal Revenue Code, no longer serve any revenue purpose, and are impliedly repealed or are unconstitutional."
Rock Island Armory was charged with manufacturing "machineguns" in 1987 and 1988 in violation of the registration requirements of the National Firearms Act. In U. S. v. Rock Island Armory, Inc. (773 F. Supp. 117, C.D. Ill. 1991), the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois dismissed those charges because the NFA sections upon which they were based were "without any constitutional basis." The judge noted that the Supreme Court had previously ruled that the NFA`s registration requirement was constitutional only because it was enacted for the purpose of facilitating the collection of tax revenue. Thus, he concluded, because the Hughes Amendment had been interpreted as prohibiting the possession of fully-automatic firearms manufactured after May 19, 1986, the NFA`s registration requirement no longer served its tax collection purpose. The judge said that since "Congress has no enumerated power to require registration of firearms," the constitutional basis for the NFA registration provision no longer existed. The government initiated an appeal of the decision, but later requested that the appeal be dismissed, thus the Rock Island decision stands. In U.S. v. Dalton (960 F.2d 121, 10th Cir. 1992), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit adopted the Rock Island precedent.
...when the NFA was passed it was stated in the Congressional Record by the Roosevelt Administration that they wanted to ban machine guns outright but could not due to the Second Amendment. Hence the tax and register scheme of the NFA.
The Hughes Amendment altered the 1968 GCA, but was passed into law as a portion of the 1986 FOPA.
IIRC, the '68 GCA also restructured the entire '34 NFA under new sections/headings while keeping the same crimes, so you're charged under violating the '68 GCA for NFA violations rather than the '34 or '86 laws.
The DC law stipulated that if YOU did not own your legally-registered handgun prior to 1976, you can never legally own any handgun.
922(o) says that, unless THE GUN was manufactured prior to some date in 1986, that gun can never be legally owned.
Under 922(o), any gun legally registered before the cut-off date can be transferred to another owner, assuming that that transfer complies with the NFA. Under DC's law, if you legally own a handgun, because you owned it before 1976, you cannot legally transfer it to anyone else.
In other words, the DC law is about YOU, and 922(o) is about THE GUN. They are similar, true, but there is a fundamental difference between them. That difference is far larger than the typical differences that put lawyers behind the wheels of Mercedes.
It's not a matter of cut-and-paste, folks.
I don't think so.
The DC ban is a ban on a class of firearms (handguns).
There is no federal ban on machine guns in the nominal sense.
If you haven't registered one of the subject guns by the cutoff date, you can never, ever, ever register it and, therefore, it is prohibited for you to ever own it.
It is a matter, just like Heller, of getting the right plaintiff(s). I like the owner (who is highly respected, of impeccable character, etc., etc.) of a pre-ban MG applying to own a virtually identical gun that is post-ban, and being turned down.
My biggest worry, after winning Heller with a Strict Scrutiny standard of review, is that the Congress may say (after the SC rules 922(o) to be unconstitutional), "OK, you can have your MGs back - the Court says the NFA Registry is open. But now the tax stamps cost $10,000.00." Having a Republican President may help us, and certainly the current fight between Hillary and Obama is going to split the Dems and result in less of them being elected this November.
Minnesota has offered no adequate justification for the special treatment of newspapers. Its interest in raising revenue, standing alone, cannot justify such treatment, for the alternative means of taxing businesses generally is clearly available. And the State has offered no explanation of why it chose to use a substitute for the sales tax rather than the sales tax itself.
A rule that would automatically allow the State to single out the press for a different method of taxation as long as the effective burden is no different from that on other taxpayers or, as Minnesota asserts here, is lighter than that on other businesses, is to be avoided. The possibility of error inherent in such a rule poses too great a threat to concerns at the heart of the First Amendment.
Minnesota's ink and paper tax violates the First Amendment not only because it singles out the press, but also because it targets a small group of newspapers. The effect of the $100,000 exemption is that only a handful of publishers in the State pay any tax at all, and even fewer pay any significant amount of tax. To recognize a power in the State not only to single out the press but also to tailor the tax so that it singles out a few members of the press presents such a potential for abuse that no interest suggested by Minnesota can justify the scheme.
There's nothing in 922(o) that prevents you from registering a pre-1986 MG if you didn't own it before 1986. Perhaps I'm misreading you here.
Murdoch v. Pennsylvania, 319 U.S. 105 (1943)
A case in which a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses were charged in the City of Jeannette, Pennsylvania with violating a local ordinance of selling wares without obtaining a license and paying the associated tax.
The materials being “sold” were religious booklets, pamphlets, and tracts. The materials were not actually sold, but by practice members of the groups simply requested a suggested donation. This door-to-door effort of sharing literature was seen as part of their evangelical efforts.
The Supreme Court agreed that such efforts were protected by the Constitution’s First Amendment. The Court also noted that some effort must be made to distinguish when religion is being practiced and when a commercial activity is being exercised.
The Court did not deny that all religious groups were exempt from government financial obligations and duties.
With those distinctions, the Court noted that this particular license tax was, “a flat tax imposed on the exercise of a privilege granted by the Bill of Rights. A state may not impose a charge for the enjoyment of a right granted by the federal constitution. Thus, it may not exact a license tax for the privilege of carrying on interstate commerce, although it may tax the property used in, or the income derived from, that commerce, so long as those taxes are not discriminatory… The power to impose a license tax on the exercise of these freedoms is indeed as potent as the power of censorship which this Court has repeatedly struck down.” [Emphasis added by Sam Adams].