Whereas authorized scholarship on firearms has grown tremendously since I first began writing on the difficulty within the late Eighties, one matter that has by no means been addressed intimately in any legislation journal is machine weapons. My new article within the Wyoming Legislation Overview, Machine Gun Historical past and Bibliography, goals to fill the hole.
The article seems in a symposium subject of the Wyoming Legislation Overview, based mostly on papers offered at a 2024 convention held by the legislation college’s Firearms Analysis Heart, the place I’m a senior fellow. This was the primary legislation college symposium ever on the Nationwide Firearms Act of 1934, one of many two foundational federal gun management statutes.
Of the 5 different articles within the symposium subject, certainly one of my favorites is The Custom of Quick-Barreled Rifle Use and Regulation in America, by Joseph G.S. Greenlee. Whereas this isn’t the primary article about NFA regulation of short-barreled rifles (SBRs), it’s the first to look at in depth the historical past of SBRs, which earlier than the 1934 NFA imposed a $200 tax on them, had been fairly widespread. They usually’re widespread at this time too; as of Might 2024, there have been 870,286 registered within the Nationwide Firearms Registration and Switch Report, which is maintained by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. (ATF, Firearms Commerce in america, Statistical Replace 2024, p. 12.)
My different favourite within the symposium is Stephen Halbrook’s The Energy to Tax, The Second Modification, and the Seek for Which “Gangster’ Weapons” to Tax. Briefly, the NFA invoice as launched additionally included handguns, however they had been faraway from the invoice on the insistence of the Nationwide Rifle Affiliation and the Nationwide Guard Affiliation, which on the time had been very intently allied. The inclusion of SBRs and short-barreled shotguns (SBSs) was merely an effort to stop evasion of the draft restrictions on handguns. As soon as handguns had been deleted from the NFA invoice, there was now not any purpose for the invoice to incorporate SBRs or SBSs. No testimony or congressional assertion claimed that both of those firearms sorts had been a specific crime drawback.
My very own article, on machine weapons, doesn’t delve into legislative historical past, nor does it make any arguments professional or con about particular legal guidelines for machine weapons. Relatively, the articles goals to be helpful to courts, attorneys, and students in two methods: First, the article explains the statutes, rules, and different necessary authorized texts for American machine gun legislation. Second the article supplies a historical past of the event of machine weapons and their affect on warfare, together with a complete bibliography of books for every machine gun sort. The Article begins with the 1862 Gatling gun and continues by means of the current.
Right here is the summary:
This Article supplies an introductory historical past of machine weapons and books about them. First, the Article describes federal machine gun legal guidelines and rules, and associated authorized sources. Then the Article presents the historic improvement of machine weapons from 1862 to the current, protecting the varied kinds of machine weapons: heavy, medium, gentle, normal goal, submachine gun, machine pistol, and assault rifle.
The primary machine gun to attain broad business success was the Gatling gun, invented throughout the American Civil Warfare. Though the Gatling had little impact on that warfare, shortly thereafter the Gatling gun and different handbook machine weapons began to vary warfare. Later, heavy machine weapons equivalent to the automated Maxim gun, and its successor, the Vickers gun, dominated battlefields. In direction of the tip of World Warfare I, the heavy machine gun was dethroned from its supremacy by the widespread adoption of latest, moveable gentle machine weapons, which may very well be used to suppress an enemy machine gun nest whereas different troops superior.
Within the subsequent 20 years, particularly throughout World Warfare II, machine weapons that had been simply moveable by a single soldier turned way more widespread, such because the Thompson submachine gun extensively utilized by American and British forces. Throughout the Chilly Warfare, the assault rifle, no greater than an extraordinary rifle, turned more and more necessary. Most influential, nearly at all times for ailing, was the Soviet Union’s AK-47 and its progeny. The American counterpart, the M16, proved a lot much less efficient in battle, at first as a consequence of technical issues, and everlastingly due to its puny bullet.
Enhancements in metallurgy, manufacturing, and design have improved the standard of infantry machine weapons. However a soldier with a machine gun on a battlefield within the third decade of the twenty-first century will probably be utilizing a machine gun of a broad sort that was already in widespread use by the Nineteen Fifties.
Apart from the machine weapons named within the summary, a number of the different machine weapons lined within the article embrace the Lewis Gun, the execrable French Chauchat, Browning Automated Rifles, Browning Machine Weapons, the Finnish Suomi, the British Bren Gun, Sten Weapons, Grease Weapons, the numerous German and Soviet improvements of WWII, plus Chilly Warfare and subsequent machine weapons from firms equivalent to Belgium’s Fabrique Nationale and Germany’s Heckler & Koch, the American M14 and others, and lastly the fashionable machine pistols from Uzi, MAC, and Heckler & Koch. The Article concentrates on infantry arms, with solely passing consideration to aircraft-mounted machine weapons.
Lastly, I wish to thank the employees of the Wyoming Legislation Overview for an excellent job on enhancing and cite-checking. With over 120 printed journal articles, I’ve been by means of the cite-check course of many instances, and the Wyoming course of was among the many best. Their rigor a lot improved the precision of the article, and the editors had a powerful understanding of firearms mechanics.
