/townhall/ - Townhall

That's probably a question for a tax attorney.

>>12528
Tax attorneys generally don't specialize in constitutional law or firearms law.

As written most likely.

If I am being honest, I would rather people own one so I can avoid being woken up at three in the morning for no reason.

>>12527
>Is the NFA tax on sound suppressors unconstitutional under the Second Amendment?

Anything the state does must be respected as constitutional until the state decides otherwise and I'm not a lawyer.  But I gather you are thinking -- if arms are a right, this could be seen as similar to saying, "You have freedom of religion, but if you want to be a Catholic, you have to pay $5000."  Many would say such a system is not constitutional, yes.

>>12527
Yes. While the pricetag is much more approachable today, it was fully intended to be a tax way outside of the reach of most when it was initially added.
It still to this day functions to artificially inflate prices on NFA items, including suppressors, and requires the surrendering of one's 4th Amendment rights by demanding significant personal information including fingerprints if one wants to acquire these items.
This, as well, is on top of the significant delay when receiving the ATF approval for said supposed tax stamp, which has the potential to be denied without any explanation. If you are fortunate it will only take 6 months, and there is simply no reason for this.

It's clear that this process is not a simple taxation as you might find on cigarettes, but explicitly a means of regulating these items.
This is doubly apparent when we see that the penalty for not getting this tax stamp is a felony, guaranteeing you lose your 2nd Amendment rights in some cases solely for the "constructive intent", which obviously is a purely subjective item wherein the mere possession of a short barrel which could be built into your AR could be argued sufficient.

The NFA as a whole is, by enforcement, defense, and initial argumentation, a restriction of the 2nd Amendment in the guise of a commerce clause. If it wasn't, there'd be no need to get people's finger prints when paying a tax, there'd be no need to worry about "constructive intent", and there'd be no need to slap offenders with a felony instead of a hefty fine as we do typically when people fail to pay taxes.

>>12532
I feel like the issues with firearms would vanish if we addressed the root causes of crime rather than trying to regulate a symptom away.
The ATF and NFA really only add to the problem as you have stated and I think we would both agree would be better if we did away with them and moved into a system that did away with this obfuscation.

>>12533
Have to agree. Suppressors funnily enough are perfectly legal in Europe, by large, without any kind of issue.
The movie trope of untraceable silent murder that nobody notices is just not realistic.
Honestly, even if we did go by movies, it isn't like they're used by criminals, anyway. It's almost always state actors. Spies, assassins, agents of the powerful. Funny how that works.

But, yeah. All that's functioned with this is the creation of felons for no real cause, and significant distrust by the American people in the federal government thanks to events like Ruby Ridge.

>>12534

>Ruby Ridge
Why you should own guns a case study.

I would operate under the inherent, default assumption that any regulation of firearms given the 2nd Amendment has to pass an inherent sense of legal scrutiny in terms of rationality. And these rules don't work. They don't pass the bar. They should be gotten rid of.

I've yet to see any factual evidence whatsoever provided that imposing a de facto kind of quasi-ban on sound suppressors reduces violent crime. This idea kind of just comes out of whole cloth. Even without evidence, really, I don't get the logic. A firearm with a suppressor on it is noisy. Less noisy than otherwise. What does that matter, actually? Would this actually change the plans of violent criminals doing what they want to do? I don't think so.