Quote:
Originally Posted by HardDrive
We made machine guns (for the most part) illegal for a reason.
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Yeah, because a bunch of Treasury agents had nothing to do once Prohibition was repealed. So, instead of going after bootleggers and speakeasies, we gave them the NFA of 1934 to enforce and made ATF part of the Treasury Dept. It's not like anyone but gangsters were using machine guns to commit crimes back then. And how well did the NFA help clean up organized crime? It was solely passed to keep Treasury agents employed and to justify more gov't. power and budget. Was there an uptick in machine gun violence in the US with all the bring-backs after WWII and before the 1968 amnesty?
AFAIK, there has never been a documented crime in which a legally-owned machine gun was used (since passage of NFA). So how bad would it have been otherwise with people who don't obey the laws?