Trust Changes Ahead...

[jason8844]

Until the NFA is eliminated (again, something that we DO support), there are going to be road blocks on the path to NFA ownership. We will try to minimize and reduce the impact of those road blocks as long as they exist. We will not just throw our hands up and wait for the NFA to be repealed.

I appreciate your optimism and wish I could share it. I am only 33 and would love to live to see the day when the NFA is eliminated or gutted, but as Reagan once said..."No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!"

With the momentum of the pro-gun movement right now (i.e. Recalls in Colorado, repeal of the Chicago gun registry, the Heller case, McDonald case, many states allowing hunting with silencers etc...), now is the time to chip away at the NFA. The first thing that needs to go is Silencers and SBRs. Machine guns will always be a hard sell and an over tuning of the Hughes Amendment would be near impossible without a Supreme Court ruling. However with negligible crime rates with silencers, showing the safety benefits of them, dispelling the myths and showing that even a few European nations sell them over the counter, may turn the tide to get them taken off the NFA list. SBRs are only there because the original draft of the NFA included handguns and they did not want people chopping down rifles into pistols. The handgun portion was removed before final passage, but the SBR stayed in for whatever reason. All we would need is one victory (even a small one) to start the ball rolling. SBSs on the other hand would be a harder sell than SBRs due to the "sawed-off" pejorative and public perception.

However, just like the original intent of the NFA was to reduce the number of these weapons with a tax, now they are deliberately doing it with unreasonable wait times. It only takes the FBI 30 days to fully vet a potential new recruit to get security clearances. In many states you can register to vote the same day as an election. You can get food stamps within a week of filing for them. There is no reason the NFA process should take so long. Most of my friends who would love to get into NFA stuff just do not want to deal with the wait. That alone is keeping NFA paperwork down to a large degree.