Firearms
Archive
with
attention paid to the “Lost History” of Firearms
Control
(Created
Fall 2015, Updated February 2023)
Estimating America's Firearm Stockpile, 1945-2017
This is an article based upon data sourced from multiple areas, including the BATF's own data; to establish some bounds on precisely how many firearms there are in the United States in the 20th and 21st Centuries. Also includes bonus data on prevalence of firearms per household/owner (i.e. how many guns does the average owner own?).
Estimating AR-15 Production, 1964-2017
This article attempts to affix a reasonable count on the number of AR pattern rifles produced in the US since production began in 1964.
This article attempts to lay out photographically what the various “forge markings” on AR15 parts mean. Useful if you're at a gun show and trying to figure out if that part is worth buying, and there's little (or no) information provided by the seller.
The “Lost History” of Firearms Control
The main intent of this page is not to do an exhaustive recital of all the known arguments/for/against firearms control; but rather to highlight “forgotten” items and memoranda over the decades that were ‘big’ for their day, but soon forgotten.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that the ‘lifecycle’ of the Firearms debate is remarkably short. Ideas keep getting recycled every few decades, as there’s very little ‘corporate’ memory within the debate.
For example, not many people even know that the original draft of the National Firearms Act of 1934 defined a machine gun as:
“The term "machine gun" means any weapon designed to shoot automatically or semi-automatically twelve or more shots without reloading.”
Additionally, pistols and revolvers were to be subject to the same “Class III” regulations as short barreled weapons and suppressors – 100% fingerprinting, photographing and registration of transferees – with the transfer tax on handguns being $1 and the dealer fee to traffic in them being $200/year.
Using the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ online calculator for inflation (1934 to 2014), this translates to a transfer tax of $17.67 per handgun sold and $3,533.37 per ‘machine gun’ transferred; on top of a dealer fee of $3,533.37 yearly.
The National Rifle Association (yes, that NRA) defeated the 12-round limit for semi-automatics and handgun classification as Class III weapons; leading to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Assistant Attorney General, one Mr. Joseph B. Keenan declaring to the General Federation of Women’s Clubs in Hot Springs, Arkansas that:
“the National Rifle Association had proved more powerful than the Department of Justice.”
[The Literary Digest, June 16, 1934]
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
This was a series of articles originally printed in the NRA's American Rifleman from December 1930 to July 1931 and written by Karl T Frederick, then the NRA's President. Of note is that many reoccurring themes in the gun control debate appear then, and are as relevant as they were eighty-eight years ago.
This editorial printed about one year before the National Firearms Act (NFA) became law in the American Rifleman; is rather remarkable. It says regarding bills filed in 19 state legislatures that:
Some of the bills would prohibit a father from teaching his son how to handle any kind of a gun until the boy had reached voting age [21 years old].
Several of the bills propose to outlaw machineguns, and in many cases the wording of these so-called machinegun bills is such as to outlaw every semiautomatic pistol, rifle and shotgun.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Hearings before the Committee on Ways and Means, House of Representatives, 73rd Congress, 2d session on H.R. 9066 – April 16, 18 and May 14, 15 and 16, 1934. (10~ MB PDF) – This has the original first draft of the NFA, as well as a lot of interpretative detail, such as a brief summary of British Firearms Laws circa 1934 which was inserted into the Congressional Record.
United States v. Miller, 1934 (468~ kb PDF) – The Supreme Court case resulting from the NFA.
The Literary Digest, 16 June 1934; Page 19: “Club-Women Mapping War on Gangsters: Federation at Odds With Rifle Association After Ban on Pistols Is Deleted From Firearm Sale Regulation Bill” (1.2~ MB PDF) – A period article in which FDR's Assistant Attorney General is mentioned as declaring that the NRA is more powerful than DOJ.
This is a rather full throated article from 1957, of all times.
This is a pair of letters written to GUNS magazine regarding purchasing handguns in Maryland. Of sick note is this statement in January 1964:
“We Marylanders are very much alert to the type of restrictions Mr. Powell described but we will not let it happen here, as we prize our constitutional right to keep and bear arms.”
This rather slim document details the state of firearms laws on the Federal level circa 1967; and what was being proposed around then.
1967 – Americans and their Guns: The NRA Story (Excerpt). (1.1~ MB PDF excerpt)
This 12-page excerpt from a book published by the NRA and Stackpole Publishers in 1967 shows the NRA's “stance” on gun control and talking points circa 1967.
Of note, is where LBJ says:
“I asked for the national registration of all guns and the licensing of those who carry those guns. For the fact of life is that there are over 160 million guns in this country--more firearms than families. If guns are to be kept out of the hands of the criminal, out of the hands of the insane, and out of the hands of the irresponsible, then we just must have licensing. If the criminal with a gun is to be tracked down quickly, then we must have registration in this country.”
This was written by a leading gun control proponent of the time, regarding the failure(s) of the 1968 Gun Control Act (GCA).
Per the NRA-ILA's commentary:
B. Bruce-Briggs is an historian and policy analyst. He was formerly on the staff of the Hudson Institute and the Commission on Critical Choices for Americans. Mr. Bruce-Briggs is the author or co-author of several books, including The War Against the Automobile (1977) and The New Class? (1978). Mr. Bruce-Briggs does not own firearms, nor does he belong to the National Rifle Association or to any other gun-owners' organization.
This undated brochure dating from around 1976 to 1980ish was printed by the NRA-ILA; and the money quote of it is:
The firearm adorning the cover of this
brochure is reproduced actual size. It is a Smith & Wesson K-38—a
handgun measuring 17-inches in total length, weighing nearly three
pounds, and costing well over $200.
That same K-38 would have been banned as a so-called "Saturday Night Special," under legislation considered in 1976 by the House Judiciary Committee. In fact, under that legislation, the Russo amendment to HR 11193, over 75 percent of all handgun models ever produced would have been banned—including the Colt Single Action Army, the revolver carried in virtually every Western film ever produced.
But how did the nation's major newspapers report the amendment:
The Wall Street Journal—"The legislation would have banned the sale and manufacture of small, easily concealable handguns. …"
This brochure, revised in October 1981; attacks the “ten myths” of gun control at the time.
This report lays out the criteria that were set up and used to ban importation of many firearms into the United States at President G.H.W. Bush's behest. Reading this is important to understand what “Sporting Purposes” means.
This letter, signed by the bills' sponsors, describes what it is and how it will work.
This report is a return by the ATF to the topic of “Sporting Purposes” almost a decade after 1989. This document is extremely important because it includes a report on the minutes of the original meeting in 1968 that defined what “Sporting Purposes” was/is, as well as a survey of hunting guides in 1998.
This 63-page planning paper was authored and published on the orders of J. Joseph Curran in 1999. For those not familiar with Maryland history, Curran was Maryland's Attorney General from 1987-2007 before he retired. The report was available for a long time on the Maryland State AG's website, before being eventually taken down. This planning paper pretty much has everything that’s been proposed over the years to stop “gun violence” from intensive background checks to suing the manufacturers and dealers into oblivion.
It was retrieved through the Internet Archive, through the following link:
(http://web.archive.org/web/20021001125615/http://www.oag.state.md.us/lawenforcement.htm)
Which is a 1 October 2002 trawl; with the following blurb:
“Disarming Gun Traffickers
Attorney General Curran's initiative to
crackdown on gun trafficking and illegal purchases of handguns,
Operation Crime Gun, has resulted in dozens of prosecutions in the
short time since its inception. In October 1999, Curran issued, A
Farewell to Arms, which studied the health epidemic created by the
terrific number of guns in the United States. Curran created the
report to create a public discussion about the issue of gun safety,
and to gradually change the public's attitudes regarding the
proliferation of guns in our society.
Download a PDF copy of A
Farewell to Arms (728 KB, 65 pages).”
This report is another return by the ATF to the topic of “Sporting Purposes”; once again nearly a decade after the last report in 1998. This time, it was about shotguns.