Yes, it does. However, in the case of NFA items the forms do two things: they ensure that the applicant is not disqualified from possessing the item due to some malfeasance on his or her part (criminal background check); and to ensure that the required tax on the item has been paid. Now, there are other rules regarding the interstate transport of NFA items, including (with the exception of silencers) a requirement that you notify the NFA Branch any time you move the item across a state line. The pertinent question is whether those regulations burden the RKBA without the requisite "strict scrutiny" governmental need to do so. Many people believe that the government NFA regulations do NOT pass strict scrutiny muster, but the courts have not ruled it unconstitutional (yet) so they remain valid law. A close review of the Supreme Court cases involving facial challenges to the NFA shows a notable lack of challenges and plenty of poor lawyering on the part of those few who have challenged it. I suspect this is because most state bureaucrats are unwilling to challenge federal gun control authority because they like having the issue taken off their plates at election time. Rather than having to fight divisive political battles at the state level, politicians can shove the responsibility and the blowback onto the Congress. Colorado, for example, passed some rather radical anti-gun legislation last year and as a result, two state senators were recalled, the first time that has happened in Colorado history, and a third was forced to resign in order to hold on to the democrat control of the state senate by turning over her seat to another democrat to avoid a recall election.rainbow wrote:Actually, I didn't.Seth wrote:Actually, if you want a hand grenade or a flamethrower, all you have to do is file a Form 4 (or a Form 1 if you want to manufacture one yourself) and pay the $200 for the tax stamp.rainbow wrote:You don't allow people to walk around with handgrenades, or napalm flame throwers.Seth wrote: The only thing gun bans do is disarm the very people who might need them to save their lives.
...so you're disarming people too.
Didn't know that, did you?
Still, filling in forms is an infringement of your constitutional right to freely carry lethal weapons.
I mean it restricts the rights of the terminally stupid illiterate citizens, not so?
That being said, neither the NFA rules nor any other federal or state regulations restrict the rights of "terminally stupid illiterate" citizens, who have just as much right to keep and bear arms as anyone else, unless and until they do something to abuse that right and therefore forfeit it. There is one exception to this conduct-based analysis and that is persons who have been "adjudicated" to be mentally ill. Every other disqualifier requires some wrongdoing on the part of the individual who is being disqualified.
Yes, indeed it would have. Then again nothing prevented those attackers from using hand grenades if that's the weapon they choose to use. They didn't, but they certainly could have. Every single terrorist bombing, like the Boston bombers, involves the illegal use of items that are or can be turned into weapons, and all the laws on the books that forbid people from doing such things did not stop the bombers, did they? You're trying to conflate the actions of killers and terrorists with the actions of law abiding citizens, which is a typical bit of liberal illogic. That a law-abiding citizen might be carrying a concealed handgun for self defense cannot be used to bolster an argument that a killer or terrorist might be carrying a concealed handgun for illegal use. If a killer wants to carry a concealed handgun, or a concealed hand grenade, or a concealed vest bomb, or a concealed knife that killer will do so regardless of and in spite of every law controlling the carrying of arms by anyone, including the law-abiding. Therefore, those laws are utterly useless in preventing terrorists from blowing people up, or shooting them, or knifing them. The only thing that can stop an armed killer intent on killing people is someone with an effective weapon who can use it in self defense, and the only thing that laws prohibiting law-abiding citizens from carrying those arms does is to ensure that no member of the public actually present in the first 60 seconds of such an attack will be able to a damned thing other than run, hide or die with the rest of the victims.Now if the people at the train station had handgrenades instead of knifes, do you think the death toll might have been a bit higher?
Which is what makes laws that disarm law-abiding citizens so fundamentally evil.
Since 1987, Florida has issued more than 2.5 million concealed carry permits. Of all those permits issued, a grand total of 168 permittees have committed gun-related crimes. That is a whopping 0.00672 percent. This amply proves that law-abiding citizens do not, as the anti-gun hysterics, engage in street gunfights with one another. In point of fact, CCW permitees are far, far less likely to be involved in any sort of crime than your average unarmed citizen.
The obvious conclusion is that there is not only no compelling government need to prohibit the lawful carrying of arms by citizens (which is required by the 2nd Amendment), there is a compelling need for the government NOT to do so. That's exactly why the federal courts ordered Illinois to issue a law that allows citizens to obtain concealed carry permits after more than a hundred years of flatly denying them to anyone.
