Wrong - you're confusing letter and spirit. The letter of the NFA was to enact taxes in order to raise revenue. The spirit was to prohibit certain classes of firearms. The law continues to exist because the letter of the law is legal. The obvious intent and spirit are a different matter altogether.The spirit of the NFA can't be to make ownership of machine guns illegal, because that would be against the 2nd amendment.
Not at all. The ultimate goal of gun control is simply control. Perhaps not for every proponent, but at the level the laws are passed, they are about incremental increase in control. Gun control is just one symptom of the overall statist affliction.The spirit of the NFA must be to protect the public by imposing minor inconveniences. Isn't that the ultimate goal of gun control?
The average yearly pay for the time was considerably less than $2,000. A $200 tax was more than a month's pay for the average person. That wasn't for the whole gun, that was just the tax.
The $200 tax applied if your shotgun was a little too short, or if you'd cut the stock on your carbine down for your kid so the overall length was too short or if you had stuck a length of muffler on the end of your .22 - more than a month's pay for each and every item. What is the spirit behind that? Are those "minor inconveniences" that promote public safety or a backdoor method to effectively ban whole classes of firearms by making them ?
That's your "spirit" of the law.
Also, as others mentioned the NFA originally would have included all handguns chambered for calibers larger than .22 rimfire. Considering that many criminal shootings use handguns, if this law was so harmless and helpful, why weren't handguns included in the final draft?
You can guess all you want. Whatever the intent of their law, the 73rd congress decided effectively ban a whole class of weapons through the use of an improbably large tax. Imagine paying $50,000 vehicle tax whether you were buying a $450 junker or $75,000 luxury car. Would cars be technically banned? No. Would they be effectively prohibited? For most people, yes.It would be very interesting to read the transcripts of Congressional debate when the NFA was debated. How many members of Congress said outright they want guns banned, and how many gave speeches about public saftey? My guess is the "spirit" of the law was to keep people safe. That's why I said I do not believe these police officers violated the spirit of the law.
You're getting spirit and letter confused again. The letter of the law (revenue generation, law regulating interstate commerce) is considered legal despite the fact that it neither raises enough revenue to even support itself nor is applied only to interstate commerce. The spirit of the law is to prohibit ownership of those weapons. Due to inflation, $200 doesn't go so far to prohibit as it once did, but if you're going to talk about spirit and intent, go back and read the law in the context of when it was passed.If the spirit of the law was different, and Congress acknowledged it, then I believe the NFA would have been struck down.
Agreed. At worst this should be a situation that can be settled with $200 and some late fees. Sadly, as you well know the NFA isn't about the taxes and the US government is willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and human lives on $200 tax issues when they're NFA violations.This offense amounts to failing to file some paperwork and pay $200 in taxes. It should be punished equally with other crimes that amount to failure to file a tax form and pay $200 in taxes.