Great Resource

Dave Hardy is working to bring the history of the Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986 into the digital age by getting it all online. I know I’ve been frustrated at the difficulty of finding good information, and this will be a great help. This was our major legislative victory of the 1980s, and it’s a shame it’s been stained with the stench of the Hughes Amendment, because it really did represent a pretty significant restructuring of the Gun Control Act.

Related posts (automatically generated):

  1. We’re Winning: Campus Carry
  2. Changes Afoot for GBR Range?
  3. Making Sausage in Illinois

14 thoughts on “Great Resource”

  1. Well, there’s a fellow named Ajax22 who has found significant evidence that the Hughes Amendment was likely never passed, and is even in the process of tracking down a video showing this. He’s gonna put it on Youtube. This is a game changer, and if the evidence pans out, then a significant number of people have a lot of money coming to them for abuses, confiscation of private property, imprisonment, and death at the hands of federal officials.

  2. I saw that. It’s not true. I was planning to show why it wasn’t, but there were incomplete parts to completely debunk it. I’m hoping Dave’s work might let me finish that work.

  4. I suspect working from the base of Rock Island Arsenal would be a better way.

    Alternatively, you could make an argument that the current distinction between a shotgun and a machine gun (as defined) is not a good one.

  5. Mr Rosenthal also wanted to set up a machine gun shoot / publicity stunt in PA last year to get everyone up in arms because there would be scary machine guns, and then he had some super secret plan to spin it as positive PR. Or something. The idea was not fully baked, and likely would have backfired. I’d keep an eye on this one, kinda like Mr Embody in TN. Luckily for us, it doesn’t look like his current project can backfire.

  6. Just realized my comment may be confusing – I was referring to one of the comments, not Mr Hardy’s great resource.

  7. I also posted this on Mr. Hardy’s blog, but I’ll ask here, too: there seem to be a lot of efforts by unconnected people to make more info available on the Firearms Owners Protection Act, and especially the Hughes Amendment. Is there something in the works we don’t know about?

  8. On a fundamental level it’s very hard to say the Hughes Amendment didn’t pass because it’s up to each house of the Congress to decide what that means. E.g. from that quaint document that’s too old for anyone to understand, “Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings”. It’s specific about quorum issues and that “All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives” (although that’s been effectively nullified) and otherwise it only gets specific about what happens after passage, the interactions with the President WRT to signing or vetoing.

    If you doubt, look up how the Brady Bill was passed (from memory) in the middle of the night essentially because Bob Dole was tired of fighting it.

  9. What Harold says.

    The the House, at the time, did not raise a stink itself about “it didn’t really pass and the Speaker is trying to rook us”, then it passed.

    The House is the final authority on what “passed the house” or not.

    (Plus given the Senate concurrence, signature by the President, and no effort at all to remove the Amendment in the past 24 years, the odds of the Court nullifying it even if it could be somehow Proven Beyond Any Doubt that it Never Really Passed are… exactly zero.)

  10. Even if it could be proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Hughes Amendment did not legitimately pass, the courts would still refuse to strike it down.

    It fits their policy preferences.

  11. Their policy preference being “don’t meddle in the affairs of Congress”; yes.

    SCOTUS would refuse to strike down anything that passed the way the Hughes Amendment allegedly did, because that’s a terrible can of worms.

  12. It’s the polictical question doctrine. The courts won’t touch it. Under current SC rulings no congressional vote is even needed. If the Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House certify that a bill has passed both houses and the President signs it, it becomes law.

Comments are closed.