On Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:44:50 -0700, Don Homuth wrote:

Depends upon the regulation. There are no gun rights advocates who
consider restrictions upon the use of firearms to be unconstitutional.
Laws saying you can't discharge firearms within 500 feet of an occupied
residence, or that you can't shoot your neighbor's dog, have never been
challenged as unconstitutional.

There are very few gun rights advocates who consider restrictions on
ownership imposed on individuals because of criminal convictions or
because of legal findings that the individual would pose a risk to self
or others if allowed a firearm to be unconstitutional. Laws forbidding
possession by convicted felons have widespread support among the gun
rights community. In fact, the NRA has been lobbying heavily trying to
get these laws - which are already on the books - actually enforced.

What we object to are measures that are intended to make it more
difficult for the average person to obtain and possess a firearm.
There's nothing inherently unconstitutional about a tax on firearms
purchase. There's an 11%% federal excise tax on firearms and ammunition,
that is used to fund a variety of wildlife conservation efforts that was
passed because of the lobbying efforts of hunters and shooters,

OTOH, the National Firearms Act of 1934 imposed a $200 tax on the sale of
a $10 short-barreled shotgun. It wasn't intended to raise revenue, it
was intended to make ownership of certain classes of weapons
prohibitively expensive. It is clearly unconstitutional, regardless of
Miller.

Beyond that, it was amended in 1986 to forbid the acceptance of the tax
on firearms of the specified classes that were manufactured weapons.
Possession of a weapon of the specified types, without a tax stamp
proving that the tax has been paid, is a felony. But if the weapon was
manufactured post-1986, BATF will refuse to accept the tax payment.

In other words, it is a felony to not have paid a tax that the government
refuses to accept.

That is clearly unconstitutional. And, in fact, has been ruled so by a
federal court - US v. Rock Island Armory:

Since its passage in 1934, the registration, taxation, and
other requirements of the National Firearms Act ("NFA") have been
upheld by the courts under the power of Congress to raise revenue.
(Footnote 5) However, 18 U.S.C. sec. 922(o), which became effective
on May 19, 1986, prohibits possession of machineguns, and thereby
repealed or rendered unconstitutional the portions of the National
Firearms Act which provided for the raising of revenue from the
making, possession, and transfer of machineguns made after such
date. As the government conceded at oral argument, the United
States refuses to register or accept tax payments for the making or
transfer of machineguns made after 1986. (Footnote 6) Thus,
sec. 922(o), as applied to machineguns made after May 19, 1986,
left the registration and other requirements of the National
Firearms Act without any constitutional basis.

All of the talk in the Heller decision regarding machine guns was because
of this - the 1986 ban on the registration of new machine guns is clearly
unconstitutional, and everyone knows it.

--
Among the evils then of our situation may well be ranked the multiplicity
of laws from which no State is exempt. As far as laws are necessary, to
mark with precision the duties of those who are to obey them, and to take
from those who
are to administer them a discretion, which might be abused, their number
is the price of liberty. As far as the laws exceed this limit, they are a
nusance: a nusance of the most pestilent kind. Try the Codes of the
several States by this test, and what a luxuriancy of legislation do they
present. The short period of independency has filled as many pages as the
century which preceded it. Every year, almost every session, adds a new
volume. This may be the effect in part, but it can only be in part, of
the situation in which the revolution has placed us. A review of the
several codes will shew that every necessary and useful part of the least
voluminous of them might be compressed into one tenth of the compass, and
at the same time be rendered tenfold as perspicuous.
- James Madison

--
Among the evils then of our situation may well be ranked the multiplicity
of laws from which no State is exempt. As far as laws are necessary, to
mark with precision the duties of those who are to obey them, and to take
from those who
are to administer them a discretion, which might be abused, their number
is the price of liberty. As far as the laws exceed this limit, they are a
nusance: a nusance of the most pestilent kind. Try the Codes of the
several States by this test, and what a luxuriancy of legislation do they
present. The short period of independency has filled as many pages as the
century which preceded it. Every year, almost every session, adds a new
volume. This may be the effect in part, but it can only be in part, of
the situation in which the revolution has placed us. A review of the
several codes will shew that every necessary and useful part of the least
voluminous of them might be compressed into one tenth of the compass, and
at the same time be rendered tenfold as perspicuous.
- James Madison