Assuming you had the money, your first problem would be in finding guns that were commercially available. That pretty much narrows the choice down to the Thompson. In 1934, Auto Ordnance was still trying to sell the initial 1921 production run of 25,000 units. The fact is, there wasn't much demand. Criminals were stealing guns, not buying them over the counter.
So they must have stolen them from law abiding automatic weapons owners, right? I'm sure you're not saying that as far back as 1934, gun laws were passed that had zero to do with stopping criminals? Nah, can't be.
No, the gangs were stealing weapons from police stations and National Guard armories. In 1934, private owners of Thompsons were mostly entities like the corporate owners of coal mines, who used them to quell labor unrest. So, unlike today, there was no real constituency that would have been harmed by clamping down on them. It hadn't yet occurred to anyone to collect machine guns. That explains why the NRA could support the NFA, once the provision on ordinary handguns had been removed.
That's actually right. The NFA was "feel good" legislation. It had little to do with the decline in spectacular criminal gang activity in the 1930's. Better FBI work had more to do with that. Plus, the criminal activity was not as profitable once countermeasures were taken by banks, etc. I remember going to the bank with my parents around 1950. It was a damned fortress, with armed guards, hardened teller windows, etc. Not a welcoming place.
The people in actual power know it's not a panacea for what it's being promoted as. It's a gateway to the panacea that they actually want to accomplish. It has nothing to do with lowering the rate of crime. Said people are sinister, but they aren't stupid.
PPSh41 didn't exist in 1934, though a handful of prototypes of its immediate predecessor, the PPD34 might have been kicking around the workshop by July.
Not sure the Monitor was available in '34; from potentially faulty memory the 1918A1 did not even come out until '36.
I did actually know this
and this...
Thanks, but your statement is out of context to my post. The entirety of my post was that $200 (in 1934) was worth $4600 in 2023 inflation adjusted dollars. $200 was likely more than a year's income for most people, in 1934. The discussion is about the time frame of 1934, not 1971.
That's about a 540% (5.4X) increase in value over 89 years, which is a little over 6% per year.
I thought the intent of this thread would be to buy the gun before the effective date of the NFA, and then register it for free during the initial amnesty period. This would save you $200 times the number of guns purchased.
The more important number are the guns that were not registered during the November 1968 amnesty. I was 23 years old at the time, and although I did not have any NFA weapons, I knew people who did. I got the impression that most of them did not take advantage of the amnesty. In discussions, the feeling was that registration was just the first step to confiscation. (Some things never change.) I'll bet the non-registrants later regretted their decision.
How would you feel about indexing the tax to inflation if the Hughes Amendment was lifted in exchange?
