Cramer on The National Firearms Act and Perceived Constitutional Limitations in 1934

Clayton E. Cramer, College of Western Idaho, has published The National Firearms Act and Perceived Constitutional Limitations in 1934. Here is the abstract.

Laws regulating firearms based on their lethality as "weapons of mass destruction" have no Founding Era equivalent and such weapons were for sale to civilians. They were common enough to be subject to fire safety regulations. How long did this Framing Era understanding persist? What implications does this have for so-called "assault weapons" and machine gun regulation? When Congress held hearings on the National Firearms Act (1934), discussions between Members of the Subcommittee and Executive branch advocates for the bill repeatedly phrased their support for this rather complex tax law because they recognized that a federal ban on civilian ownership or manufacture of machine guns was likely unconstitutional. This argues that the Framing Era understanding persisted well into the 20th century and should be part of understanding current post-Heller challenges to bump stock and machine gun regulation.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.