Joseph gets two links today.  This one for a quote from a US Attorney, who no doubt is eager to tout his prosecution of a whacky militia type, but done under the absurdities that are the National Firearms Act:
The mere possession of an AR 15 semiautomatic rifle with a barrel less than 16 inches is a crime of violence, he said.
So does that presume there’s nothing violent about having a 16 inch AR-15?   Get that folks?  Have a 14.5 inch M4 upper, violent nut case, 16 inch upper, you’re a OK.  Sounds a lot like the Canadian nonsense about pistol barrel lengths I linked to earlier.  See, we have our own nonsense too.
I may be wrong, but isn’t that more like a tax violation? People often forget that a lot ‘gun crimes’ are merely not paying taxes.
I don’t think the prosecutor will split hairs and call it a mere tax violation. A tax violation doesn’t strip you of 2A rights the way a good illegal possession of an SBR will.
As to crime of violence, what BS. I have an AR upper with a 10.5 inch barrel, does that make me more capable of a crime of violence. And mine isn’t even NFA since it has a 5.5 inch flashhider welded to the front of it. How is one more dangerous than the other?
My fear is a prosecutor like this not discerning between NFA and non-NFA short barrels and trying to prosecute someone in legal possession of such an AR and getting the BATFE to help them! Given the ATF’s tendency to not write down their rules in a consistent, accessible (to us layman) manner, what is to stop them from redefining the law on the fly with regard to what defines a 16 inch minimum barrel length? That would be a surefire way to create a couple more million instant criminals.
Regardless, the fellow in the article is a criminal. He violated NFA rules with regard to sales and possession of SBR/S and silencers and illegal transfer of the same. While I think the NFA rules regarding both are ridiculous, they also scare the crap out of me. This fellow decided to tread on the wrong side of the law and got caught. Whatever sympathy I have has to be tempered by the fact that to be taken seriously as gun rights advocates, we have to uphold the standards of current law (no matter how much we may dislike it) and work to see it changed. I may understand why he did or relate to his cause (I don’t), it doesn’t excuse his actions and he should be punished for them.
NFA it actually a tax violation, since when it was passed, the herpes theory of the commerce clause had not yet been adopted by the courts, so for Congress to be able to prosecute for possession, it had to be within the realm of powers that Congress had. Taxation was one of them, so they went with that. Interestingly, they used to same method years earlier to regulate narcotics.
Narcotics taxing operated on the idea that you needed to get a tax stamp from the government in order to possess the narcotic. And the government never issued the stamp.
Like gun control, narcotics restrictions such as the tax stamp, was enacted because of racism.
It was around that time that the Court’s view of a person’s rights to do what they choose with their own bodies began to change. Through the 19th century and into the 20th, the Supreme Court held the view that a person had a Constitutional right to ingest whatever they wanted into their own bodies. It was only when the outward costs to society of individual choice started to be seen did the attempts to restrict and ultimately criminalize truly begin.
Taxation was the only way they could get away with it back then since the SC wasn’t going to back a legislative approach they considered Unconstitutional.
How times have changed! Then again, not really, since gun banners/controllers have been trying the same “for the good of society/the children/save the kittens!” approach for years.