Numbers for Class III

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halfmoonclip

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Got to wondering; any notion where the 16" rifle, 18" shotgun, 28" overall came from?
Where there arms that they were trying to keep legal? The numbers seem pretty arbitrary.
Thanks,
Moon
 
My understanding is the original wording of the NFA was going to ban handguns, and the barrel length and Oal requirements were instituted to keep long guns from being cut down.
The handgun part was eventually removed before the act was passed, but the length requirements remained.
As far as the actual values, they are arbitrary lengths that make no real sense.
 
And the original minimum barrel length was 18" for rifles too. Congress changed that later once they realized that they could not sell off the surplus M1 Carbines the have 17.75" barrels and the 18" rule also banned many popular 22LR rifles that had 16" barrels.

I think we all agree that the length rules don't make any sense.
 
Hate when I expect a gun law to make sense.... :confused:
I assumed that they were dodging the length of some existing firearms with the barrel length restrictions, though 'trapper' (<16") length 92s had to be pretty common.
Any thoughts on the 28"?
Moon
 
12Bravo20 said:
I think we all agree that the length rules don't make any sense.
Click to expand...
The NFA as a whole no longer makes any sense (assuming it ever did).

The really dangerous things, like destructive devices, are self-regulating. They're not available on the commercial market, and if they were, they would be priced out of reach of civilians.

Machine guns are actually less effective than modern semiautomatic rifles, because machine guns waste more ammunition. The army knows this, which is why M16's are habitually kept on semiautomatic.

Short-barreled rifles and shotguns? Afterthoughts.

Silencers are beneficial, like mufflers on cars.

And criminals get what they want, anyway.
 
AlexanderA said:
The really dangerous things, like destructive devices, are self-regulating. They're not available on the commercial market, and if they were, they would be priced out of reach of civilians.
Click to expand...
Sure they are, there are nine transferrables on GunBroker right now. There are plenty of civilians that are willing to drop $3500- $4,000.
Only The Best always has several.
 
The government used criminals they armed as justification to effectively ban full autos in 1934, but I don't think the criminals cared.
I'm about 99.999% sure criminals didn't care that the government made it more illegaler for them to do crime.

Long guns that have the barrel bulged, blown out or bent then were cut down to less than the arbitrary 16 or 18 mark to make them operable again, can easily happen.
We know poor people run cheap or messed up guns. Certain ethnic groups were forced to be poor so they run what ever they can get a hold of.
My 100 year old double cringe shot gun is a perfect example of this, the stock was broken and the last foot of the barrels are all banged up. Cutting the barrel and stock down as a poverty repair could have easily put a beat up old gun like that under 18 and/or 28 inches easy.
 
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The only real use for full auto is suppressive fire; the modest recoil of the M16 family simply made it easier to blast away. (The M14, in full auto, is virtually uncontrollable after the first couple shots...)
Modern military doctrine (assuming there's time, along with all the equity training) stresses fire discipline. Apparently the 3-shot option has been abandoned, for its technical/mechanical problems as much as anything.
Personally, I'd love a happy switch on an AR, but couldn't afford to use it much.
The best way to use full auto is with OPA (other people's ammo). ;)
Back to the regs; introduced today, there would be political pushback. They could likely be legally challenged, currently, but such a move would produce a liberal (redacted)storm.
Yeah, the numbers don't make sense.
Moon
 
The government knew the number 1 way the criminals were getting machine guns was by stealing them from the government.
This went on for years and it would appear to be by design.
 
Any one could purchase a machine gun directly from the manufacturer or at their local hardware/department stores without any paperwork prior to the passage of the 1934 NFA. The Thompson machine-gun (Tommy Gun) is just one examples of machine guns marketed and sold directly to civilians.

There was no need to steel machine guns from the government since any one could just go buy one themselves at that time.

Along with machine guns being very easy to buy, so where short rifles and short shotguns that would be considered controlled SBR's and SBS's after the 1934 NFA was enacted.
 
Machine guns were expensive in the early 20th century. Stealing them was cheaper.

dogtown tom said:
:rofl:
Click to expand...
Bonnie and clyde.
Got their BARs from another criminal who stole them from a national guard armory in 1932.
https://www.themeateater.com/hunt/firearm-hunting/the-infamous-guns-of-bonnie-and-clyde

Machine gun Kelley a felon, got his Tommy gun via straw purchase.
https://www.biography.com/crime/machine-gun-kelly

The dillinger gang "plundered the police arsenals at Auburn, Indiana and Peru, Indiana, stealing several machine guns"
https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/john-dillinger#The-Bureau Actively Joins the Hunt

Baby face nelson.
Stole Tommy guns around 1932 from an armory.
Had a full auto, custom 1911 in 38super, made by an underground gunsmith, I believe this was post 1934.
https://www.gunsamerica.com/digest/...lester-gillis-and-his-lebman-baby-machinegun/



"common ways for mobsters to obtain
firearms used in hits was by stealing them"
https://themobmuseum.org/blog/leave-the-gun-did-mobsters-seriously-do-that/
It appears theft was the preferred method of obtaining any kind of gun.

Screenshot_2023-05-12-13-35-44-1.png
How did the police comish know there were 500 MGs owned by the gangs, did the police call and ask them, did the snitches tell them that, did they call around to distributors asking if anyone was buying dozens of machine guns in and around the Chicago area, were these 500 MGs previously owned by oh say the government?
That sounds like fear mongering.
To me that sounds more like a gang problem than a gun problem.

So how many are like MG Kelly and "just bought them"?
Even though that's an over simplified version of how he got his MG.

It's almost like criminals don't care about the law.

The government allowed criminals to get machine guns, a large portion through theft from the government until things got so bad they could drop an extreme ban criminalizing just having one and no one would challenge it.

Why not make it an automatic 10 years in the pen and $250,000 fine for any violent that crime that involved a machine gun, automatic death by firing squad if you used a machine gun to murder someone or ordered that murder?
Instead of punishing everyone for just having one.
 
I can see this conversation is going to go south quickly, as soon many other threads have done.

Yes some criminals stole their firearms but a lot were also purchased at local stores or through the mail too.
 
12Bravo20 said:
I can see this conversation is going to go south quickly, as soon many other threads have done.

Yes some criminals stole their firearms but a lot were also purchased at local stores or through the mail too.
Click to expand...
A lot were sold, apparentlynot to criminals.
Some?
Who?
I searched several infamous criminals and found one that kind of "bought their MG" if you count a straw purchase since MG Kelley was already a felon and was not supposed to have any gun, yeah gun laws really stopped him.
All sources point to criminals preferred stolen machine guns.
Even 100 years ago criminals were smart enough to avoid leaving a paper trail.
 
Oh good grief.

First you wrote:
N555 "The government used criminals they armed as justification to effectively ban full autos in 1934"
And when questioned you provide only references to THEFTS from the government.

Now it's "The government allowed criminals to get machine guns..."

1. The government didn't arm any criminals as justification. That's not just silly, its laughable.
2. When you suffer a theft, its more than a bit of a stretch to claim you "allowed" the thief to take your property.
3. None of your references mentions a single thing about the government arming criminals or allowing them to obtain those firearms. When you yourself, use the terms "stole", "theft", "stealing" and "plundered" its pretty obvious the victim was the government.
4. Blaming the victim of a theft is a tactic of anti gunners and it shocks me you would imitate them.

Machine gun Kelley a felon, got his Tommy gun via straw purchase.
https://www.biography.com/crime/machine-gun-kelly
Click to expand...
Really? Where in that article you linked to does it say that? It doesn't. It says his wife bought it for him. You really think she filled out a Form 4473 FOUR DECADES before there was a 4473?

You spent a lot of time looking for articles that don't back up your claims.
 
I spent like 10 minutes looking for those.
The government allowed it to happen.
I can't find anything saying "_______ laws were passed, then when those didn't work the 1934 gun control act was passed". The government went straight to extreme measures.
Allowing criminals to steal machine guns was a means to an end.

The government didn't arm the taliban either after the botched Afghanistan pull out, the terrorists "stole them"...
It just seems like the government is really good at getting machine guns into in the hands of the last people on earth who should have them.
 
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