by Dan Baum
Makes it unlawful, with certain exceptions, for any individual to transfer or possess a machinegun.
Excludes pawnbrokers dealing in ammunition from current licensing requirements. Declares that a licensed dealer’s personal collection of firearms shall not be subject to recordkeeping requirements in specified circumstances.
Permits the Secretary of the Treasury to revoke a license only where the holder “willfully” violates a provision of this Act. Bars the Secretary from denying or revoking a license based on violations which are alleged in criminal proceedings in which the licensee has been acquitted. Allows the Government to voluntarily dismiss such charges before trial and still proceed with revocation.
Requires the Secretary to obtain a warrant, based on reasonable cause, to examine a licensed importer’s, dealer’s, or manufacturer’s records, firearms, or ammunition. Provides certain exceptions from the warrant requirement, including a permissible annual inspection to ensure compliance with the recordkeeping requirements.
Requires licensed collectors to maintain records of the receipt, sale, or other disposition of firearms.
Requires all licensees to report all multiple firearms sales.
Requires records maintained by a licensee who has discontinued business to be delivered to the Secretary.
Allows the Secretary to require additional recordkeeping and reports when necessary.
Permits licensed importers, manufacturers, and dealers to conduct business at temporary locations other than the one specified on a license (for example, gun shows).
Establishes either a “knowing” (scienter) or “willful” requirement with respect to general violations of this Act. Makes it a misdemeanor for any licensee to knowingly violate the recordkeeping requirements of this Act.
Imposes additional penalties, under certain circumstances, for: (1) the use of a firearm during certain drug trafficking crimes; (2) the use of a machinegun during the commission of a crime; and (3) the use of a firearm equipped with a silencer during the commission of a crime.
Amends the forfeiture provision to require that a firearm be “involved in or used” (instead of “involved in or used or intended to be used”) in a knowing violation of the Gun Control Act. Directs the court to award attorney fees to the prevailing party (other than the United States) in such forfeiture actions.
Imposes a mandatory sentence of not less than 15 years imprisonment and a fine of not more than $25,000 for individuals with three or more prior convictions of robbery or burglary who are convicted of illegally shipping firearms in interstate or foreign commerce. Prohibits the court from: (1) suspending such sentence; or (2) granting parole or probation.
Permits any person prohibited from possessing, shipping, transporting, or receiving firearms or ammunition to apply to the Secretary for relief from such prohibition. Permits any person denied such relief to seek de novo judicial relief in Federal court.
Makes the authority of the Secretary to permit the importation of certain types of firearms nondiscretionary. Makes it unlawful to import any frame, receiver, or barrel of a firearm which, if assembled, would be prohibited.
Amends the rulemaking authority of the Secretary to provide that no regulation may require: (1) the transfer of records required under this Act to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State; or (2) the establishment of any system of registration of firearms, firearm owners, or firearm transactions. Requires a 90-day public comment period for proposed regulations.
Prohibits the Secretary from prescribing regulations which require purchasers of black powder to complete affidavits or forms attesting to their exemption from certain provisions of the Federal criminal code.
Permits the interstate transportation of unloaded firearms by any person not prohibited by Federal law from such transportation regardless of any State law or regulation.
Imposes additional penalties for the use of armor-piercing ammunition during the commission of certain drug trafficking crimes.
Amends the National Firearms Act to include within the definition of “machinegun” any part designed and intended solely and exclusively for use in converting a weapon to a machinegun. (Current law includes only a “combination of parts” within such definition.)
Among the local Republican Party chapters that have used machine-gun shoots as fund-raisers is that in Manchester, New Hampshire, as reported in “N.H. Republican Fundraiser to Feature Machine Guns,” Reuters, July 24, 2007.
CHAPTER FIVE: FUDD LIKE ME
Howard Dean’s comment about hunters not needing AK-47s appeared in “Dean Walks a Tightrope Over Positions on Gun Control,” by Adam Nagourney and Jodi Wilgoren, in The New York Times, October 31, 2003. John Kerry’s comment was reported in “Kerry Takes Aim at Dean Position on Guns,” by Mike Glover of the Associated Press, October 31, 2003. The Bill Clinton quote was reported by Karen Gullo of the Associated Press in her November 16, 1997, story “ ‘You Don’t Need an Uzi’ to Hunt Deer—Clinton Explains Ban on Import of Assault Rifles.” One can watch Cass Sunstein call for a ban on hunting on YouTube: “Cass Sunstein Wants to Ban Hunting.”
On this page, I refer to the “40 percent of American households that owned guns.” This comes from a May 1997 Research in Brief bulletin from the National Institute of Justice called “Guns in America: National Survey of Private Ownership and Use of Firearms,” by Phillip J. Cook of Duke and Jens Ludwig of Georgetown. They found that 40 percent was a decrease from the 1960s.
On October 26, 2011, Gallup reported in “Self-Reported Gun Ownership in U.S. Is Highest Since 1993” that 47 percent of American adults had a gun in their home or on their property, which was down from a high of 54 percent in 1993 but higher than at any time since. More than half (55 percent) of Republicans said they owned a gun, as opposed to 40 percent of Democrats. Gun ownership was highest in the South (54 percent of households), lowest in the East (36).
CHAPTER SIX: FLICKED OFF
One can read about the killing of Brandon Franklin by Ronald Simms in such stories as “Suspect in Hollygrove Shooting Turns Himself In Sunday,” by Richard Thompson, in The Times-Picayune, May 10, 2010; “Hollygrove Shooting Victim Took Leadership Role in Classroom and in Band,” by Lauri Maggi of The Times-Picayune, May 10, 2010; and “Brandon Franklin of T.B.C. Brass Band Murdered,” in Offbeat, May 12, 2010.
The effectiveness of waiting periods was evaluated in “Firearms Laws and the Reduction of Violence: A Systematic Review,” by Robert A. Hahn, et al., AJPM vol. 28 (2005): 40.
The court case that established that police have no constitutional duty to protect citizens from crime was Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 545 U.S. 748 (2005).
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE RUBBER-GUN SQUAD
The Great Train Robbery was directed and photographed by Edwin S. Porter—Thomas Edison’s former cameraman—in 1903. Ten minutes long, it was filmed in Essex County Park and along the Lackawanna Railroad in New Jersey.
For excellent articles on Stembridge Gun Rentals, I refer the reader to “Shoot for Effect,” by John Fasano in the October 1998 issue of Guns magazine, and, even better, “7,000 Guns for Hire,” by Bob Thomas, in the January 1969 issue of True magazine (“For Today’s Man”).
Not all goes smoothly in the Hollywood gun business. USA Today reported on December 12, 2011, in “Weapons Reportedly Meant for Brad Pitt Film Seized,” that Hungarian authorities had confiscated about a hundred live weapons headed for the set of World War Z, Pitt’s zombie-war movie.
Anybody interested in wasting many hours could visit imfdb.com—the International Movie Firearms Database—which attempts to list every firearm used in every movie. If you need to know, say, how Jack Bauer armed himself in the second season of 24, what Jimmy Stewart used to shoot Liberty Valance, or which pistols gunned down Marlon Brando in The Godfather, you can look them up. You can answer for yourself the question that inevitably arises as gun guys sit in the dark before a flickering screen: What is that gun? The database is cross-referenced, t
oo; type in the name of a gun and imfdb will tell you every movie in which it has appeared. The Bernardelli Model 60? Dawn of the Dead (1978) and the first six episodes of The X-Files. The Haenel-Schmeisser? Metropolis (1927). My Glock 19? Too many to list.
Imfdb.com is one of those realms of arcana that the Internet was practically invented to foster. It tries to identify guns in movies you’d have thought contained no guns—the Colt New Service that flashes by in the international trailer for Water for Elephants or the Remington 700PSS seen for a nanosecond in Up in the Air. Imfdb is where you go to learn that the first time an M16 appeared in a movie was in Seven Days in May, in 1964, or that until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989 and its weapons became available to Hollywood, almost all the Soviet guns in movies were mocked-up American guns disguised with plastic and sheet metal. Woe betide the Hollywood director who commits the sin of anachronism or inaccuracy. The makers of the 2002 Mel Gibson film We Were Soldiers get high marks from imfdb for scattering shell casings from live rounds on the ground; they look different from the crimped casings made by blanks. But imfdb dismisses the overall effort this way: “Many rifles used in this movie were not actual XM16E1s. The historical XM16E1s had only a partial magazine fence. Many rifles were actually M16A1s mocked up to look like XM16E1s, modified with chromed bolt carriers and 3 prong flash hiders.” Well! I must not have been much of an arma-cinephiliac; I was impressed that the filmmakers had gone to the trouble of modifying guns with chromed bolt carriers and 3-prong flash hiders. And for the record, gun guys aren’t the only ones policing movie props with obsessive compulsion. Witness these websites: the Internet Movie Cars Database, the Internet Movie Plane Database, Watches in Movies, and Rotary Action (helicopters in movies). Even The Fountain Pen Network maintains a page to track—and argue over—movie sightings.
CHAPTER EIGHT: BRING IT ON, GOD DAMN IT!
This is how Thomas, the Library of Congress’s online service, summarizes the Brady Act of 1994:
Title I: Brady Handgun Control—Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act—Amends the Federal criminal code to: (1) require the Attorney General, within five years, to establish a national instant criminal background check system (system) for firearm licensees to contact for information on whether receipt of a firearm by a prospective transferee would violate Federal or State law; and (2) establish an interim five-day waiting period for handgun purchases and procedures for checking with the chief law enforcement officer of the place of residence of the purchaser (police official) for such information.
(Sec. 102) Prohibits, under the interim procedures, any licensed importer, manufacturer, or dealer from transferring a handgun to an unlicensed individual unless: (1) the transferor has received a statement of eligibility from the individual, verified the individual’s identity, and notified the police official and during the next five business days the transferor either has not received information that the transfer would violate the law or has received notice that the transfer would not violate the law; (2) the individual has presented a statement from the police official that he or she requires a handgun because of a threat to a family member; or (3) applicable State law requires, before any transfer, verification that possession of a handgun by the purchaser would not be unlawful. Requires notified police officials to make a reasonable effort to make the relevant determinations within five days.
Prohibits the transfer of a firearm to an unlicensed individual after the system is established unless the transferor has verified the individual’s identity and contacted the system and either: (1) the system has provided the transferor with a unique identification number for the transfer; or (2) three business days have elapsed and the system has not notified the transferor that the transfer would violate the law.
Permits a transfer (before or after the system is established) if: (1) the individual has presented a permit issued in the past five years by a State that verifies that the individual is legally qualified; (2) the Secretary of the Treasury has approved the transfer under specified provisions of the Internal Revenue Code; or (3) the Secretary has certified that compliance with the applicable background check requirements is impracticable.
Requires the destruction of records pertaining to any transfer to an eligible individual.
Sets penalties of up to a $1,000 fine, imprisonment for not more than one year, or both, for violations of this Act.
(Sec. 103) Directs the Attorney General to: (1) determine a timetable by which each State should be able to provide criminal records on an on-line capacity basis to the system; (2) expedite the upgrading of State records in the Federal criminal records system maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the development of hardware and software to link State systems to the national system, and the FBI’s revitalization initiatives for technologically advanced fingerprint and criminal records identification; and (3) notify each licensee and the chief law enforcement officer of each State upon establishment of the national system.
Provides for the correction of erroneous information in the system and for regulations to ensure the privacy and security of system information.
Prohibits any Government entity from using the system to establish any system for the registration of firearms, except with respect to persons prohibited from receiving a firearm.
Authorizes appropriations.
(Sec. 106) Amends the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 to permit the use of formula grants under the drug control and system improvement grant program for the improvement of State record systems and the sharing with the Attorney General of specified records for the purpose of implementing this Act.
Directs the Attorney General, through the Bureau of Justice Statistics, to make grants to States for the creation of a computerized criminal history record system or improvement of an existing system and for assistance in the transmittal of criminal records to the national system.
Title II: Multiple Firearm Purchases to State and Local Police—Requires each Federal firearms licensee to submit a report of multiple sales or other dispositions of firearms to the department of State police or State law enforcement agency of the State or local law enforcement agency of the local jurisdiction in which the sale or other disposition took place. Prohibits agency disclosure of any such form or contents and requires each such department or agency to: (1) destroy any form containing such information and any record of the contents within 20 days after such form is received, except with respect to a purchaser who is prohibited from receipt of a firearm; and (2) certify to the Attorney General (at six-month intervals) that no disclosure contrary to such requirements has been made and that all such forms and records have been destroyed.
Title III: Federal Firearms License Reform—Federal Firearms License Reform Act of 1993—Amends the Federal criminal code to prohibit any common or contract carrier from requiring or causing any label, tag, or other written notice to be placed on the outside of any container indicating that it contains a firearm.
Prohibits: (1) any common or contract carrier from delivering in interstate or foreign commerce any firearm without obtaining written acknowledgement of receipt of the package containing the firearm; and (2) stealing or unlawfully taking or carrying away from a licensed firearms importer, manufacturer, or dealer any firearm in the licensee’s business inventory that has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce (subject to penalties of up to a $10,000 fine, ten years’ imprisonment, or both, for violations).
(Sec. 303) Increases license application fees for firearms dealers who do not deal in destructive devices.
Regarding states that have closed the gun-show loophole, the Violence Policy Center, which supports closing the loophole nationally, reports this on its website:
“Only six states (California, Colorado, Illinois, New York, Oregon and Rhode Island) require universal background checks on all firearm sales at gun shows, including sales by unlicensed dealers. Three more states (Connecticut, Maryland and Pennsylvania) require backgro
und checks on all handgun sales made at gun shows. Eight other states (Hawaii, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Nebraska and North Carolina) require purchasers to obtain a permit and undergo a background check before buying a handgun. 33 states have taken no action whatsoever to close the gun show loophole. In two states, voters themselves closed the loophole when their legislatures refused to do so. On November 7, 2000, the citizens of Colorado overwhelmingly voted 70%–30% in favor of Amendment 22, closing the gun show loophole in their state. The referendum followed the tragic shooting at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999 (the guns used in the shooting were purchased from private sellers at Denver gun shows). In Oregon, voters also voted overwhelmingly, 62%–38%, in favor of Measure 5, effectively closing the gun show loophole in their state.”
The study referenced on pages 127 and 128, which found that gun shows, with or without the loophole, had little or no effect on violent crime, was published in The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press Journals, as “The Short-Term and Localized Effect of Gun Shows: Evident from California and Texas,” by Mark Duggan of the University of Maryland, Randi Hjalmarsson of the University of London, and Brian Jacob of the University of Michigan, September 9, 2010.