The death of William Hughes and his amendment that lingers
Former member of Congress for New Jersey and ambassador to Panama, William Hughes, died on Wednesday at the age of eighty-seven. Hughes was an all too common example of politicians on the left who do some good work — in this case, his efforts against the dumping of pollution into the ocean — but who also leave a legacy of damage against basic rights. For the gun community, Hughes is best known as the author of the eponymous amendment to the Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986 that banned the sale of fully automatic firearms that have been manufactured after the law’s passage to anyone but agencies of the government.
The FOPA was presented as a response to excesses in enforcement practices of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms by limiting a federal firearms licensing requirement to people who were running a business selling guns, rather than someone who occasionally sells one in a private deal, requiring the ATF to show willful, rather than technical violations of the law, and protecting the right of ordinary people to transport secured firearms across state lines, among other details. Hughes’s amendment, something that runs contrary to the name of the law, made the transfer or possession of “a machinegun” to any ordinary person illegal unless said firearm was legally owned prior to the enactment of the FOPA.
