After machine-gun massacres in the streets, the NRA compromised on automatic weapons in 1986
The fight against and for automatic weapons, courtesy of the NRA
In 1981, Miami had so many dead bodies that one coroner rented a refrigerated hamburger van to store the overflow. One victim was shot while walking toward his apartment building; while being treated, he was fatally shot in his hospital bed. In a wealthier suburb, an attorney’s wife told Time magazine that in one week her neighborhood saw two manhunts, a friend was mugged, another was raped, her local shopkeeper was beaten, and her mother was robbed — twice.
South Florida was the nation’s leading drug conduit. More than 70 percent of the country’s marijuana and cocaine imports passed through the region. And the murder rate soared.
“Machine gun hits are the most commonplace,” said Edward D. Conroy, head of Miami’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Shooters spray bullets at stoplights, “with grandma and the kiddies getting greased along with the target.” Indeed, by the early 1980s, Miami was known as “machine gun Mecca.”
Despite Miami’s problems, Congress scaled back gun control in 1986, under pressure from the ascendant National Rifle Association. The organization made one concession, however: a federal ban on machine guns.
Even amidst growing gun violence in Miami and other cities across America, in 1986 the NRA was aiming to restore the gun liberties the Gun Control Act of 1968 had taken away. With a huge base of “law and order” conservatives, new funding channels, and a host of “sympathetic” legislators, it succeeded. That year, the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act loosened restrictions on gun sales and shipments by mail, plus reduced record-keeping requirements on the sale of certain ammunitions.
But in order to win votes among Democratic congressional votes, however, the NRA was forced to abandon an entire category of firearm: machine guns. According to the amendment, introduced at the last minute by New Jersey House Democrat William Hughes, any civilian possession of machine guns manufactured after May 19, 1986 — of which there are still 193,000 in circulation today — could be prosecuted. Already existing machine guns would be closely tracked by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
The NRA played the sacrifice as virtually meaningless. “I remember very well having dinner…with Wayne LaPierre on the big victory after it passed the House,” said former NRA lobbyist Richard Feldman. “And we weren’t too concerned about the machine gun issue.” But the decision set a precedent, especially for a powerful lobby that increasingly prided itself on zero Second Amendment compromises.
The NRA’s interpretation of the Constitution wasn’t always so black-and-white. In the early 20th century, the organization helped draft the first major federal gun control legislation. Later in the 1960s, it supported more drastic restrictions. In fact, for most of its history the NRA has opposed the proliferation of automatic weapons, specifically.
The definition of fully automatic weapons includes any weapon that reloads automatically and discharges continually with one pull of the trigger. Machine guns are automatic weapons. Semi-automatics are weapons that reload automatically but require one trigger pull per fire. AR-15 rifles like the one used in Sandy Hook are semi-automatic. However, semi-automatic weapons can be converted into automatic weapons relatively easily, with just a few parts.
There is a long history of converting weapons for criminal purposes in America. In fact, the sawed-off shotgun helped propel the gun-control debate in the 1920s and 1930s, not coincidentally around the same time the NRA began its federal lobbying efforts. Working with legislators, the organization proposed regulations that actually increased requirements for carrying concealed firearms, in particular machine guns and sawed-off shotguns. At the time, the public was simultaneously enamored with and terrified of the gangsters and bootleggers, who packed automatic weapons under their dapper overcoats. The NRA didn’t want to be associated with the likes of Al Capone, so it supported stricter permits, longer purchaser waiting periods, and steep taxes on machine guns. In 1934, the organization actually helped President Franklin Roosevelt write the National Firearms Act, also known as the “anti-machine gun” act, as part of the New Deal.
In 1939, then-president of the NRA, Karl T. Frederick, testified before Congress, “I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons. I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.” That same year, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a second wave of gun control regulations.
Since the 1986 ban, gun advocacy groups have called the court’s decision to uphold the ban on machine guns the “worst legal defeat ever” for the NRA, and according to NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, repealing the automatic weapons ban would be a “top priority.”
Meanwhile, machine gun deaths today are rare. Both the 1934 taxation and the 1986 ban majorly curbed civilian possession and criminal trafficking. Today the U.S. closely tracks an estimated legal 193,000 machine guns manufactured before 1986. The most inexpensive of these guns costs roughly $15,000. Safe to say demand is not what it used to be. Your move, NRA.
