In October of 2006 I decided to purchace my first National Firearms Act (NFA) controlled weapon specifically a suppressor, commonly refered to as a “silencer”, for my .22 caliber semi-automatic pistol. Contrary to popular belief it is completely legal to purchase and own not only suppressors but a variety of other firearms such as machineguns, short barreled rifles, shotguns, Any Other Weapons (a broad classification it ‘AOW’ covers any weapon not covered in the other categories), destructive devices and explosives.
After nearly a decade of purchasing conventional firearms from gun stores and becoming something of a collector and “Gun Nut” I thought I would apply for an “NFA” weapon. At the current time I live in Washington State and am restricted to suppressors, AOW, destructive devices and that’s about it. States can restrict what type of NFA weapons they allow to be possessed in their state. For example, Washington will allow you to own a 60mm mortar (destructive device) but not a sawed off double barreled shotgun. California (one of the most anti-gun states) will let you have a machine gun but not a suppressor. You have to ask your self what people where thinking when they made these laws?!
The common assumption is that the public sale of Thompson submachine guns or Tommy Guns (circa late 1920s to NFA enactment) and the utilization of automatic firearms in the significant organized crime of the Prohibition Era prompted the legislation. The National Firearms Act (NFA), cited as the Act of June 26, 1934, Ch. 757, 48 Stat. 1236, as amended, currently codified as Chapter 53 of the Internal Revenue Code, 26 U.S.C. § 5801 through 26 U.S.C. § 5872, is a United States federal law passed in 1934 that, in general, imposes a statutory excise tax on the manufacture and transfer of all Title II weapons and mandates the registration of those weapons. Title II weapons are defined as all sound suppressors or ’silencers’, all machine guns, all rifles with a barrel length less than 16 inches (406 mm) (SBR) and shotguns with a barrel length less than 18 inches (457 mm) (SBS), shoulder fired weapons with an overall length less than 26 inches (660 mm), weapons classified as “Any Other Weapon” (AOW) and weapons classified as “destructive devices” (DD).
The National Firearms Act of 1934 did not complete passage through Congress until after the passage of the Twenty-First Amendment, repealing Prohibition. Although mob use of machine guns may have been the implied reason behind the drafting of the Bill that became the National Firearms Act, it is likely that something else got Congress’ attention. The huge number of Treasury agents that were needed to enforce Prohibition, who were now useless, gave the government another reason to enact the law.All NFA items must be registered with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). Private owners wishing to purchase an NFA item must obtain permission from both the ATF and the county sheriff or city or town chief of police, pass an extensive background check to include submitting a photograph and finger prints, fully register the firearm, receive ATF written permission before moving the firearm across state lines, and pay a tax. The request to transfer ownership of an NFA item is made on an ATF Form 4. NFA items may also be transferred to corporations (or other legal entities such as a trust).
I chose to purchase my suppressor via a trust for a number of reasons; it does not require permission from local law enforcement and does not require a corporation to be used. There are complications in establishing a corporation to register the NFA weapon under. After careful review I enacted a trust. A trust is simple, doesn’t cost anything, by passes a lot of sticky legal matters and is perfectly legal. Well, I got together my application to “transfer” the ownership of the suppressor from the licensed dealer to me, my $200 check made out to the US Treasury Department, the $400 for the suppressor, two copies of finger print cards taken by my local Police department for a fee of $15 each and drove 85 miles to the nearest dealer of controlled firearms. I had already picked out the suppressor I wanted on an earlier trip; I also had to buy a $375 special made barrel for my $600 pistol so that the suppressor could be screwed on. If you are keeping track I’m in it over $1,600 by now to make my pistol sound like a paintball gun rather than a cap gun (That’s “POOF…” rather than ”BANG!”) and this doesn’t include gas, food or mileage traveling back and forth to the gun store. Did I mention you don’t even get to shoot the thing you are buying until AFTER you get the approval? So…if you don’t like it and want to sell it you have to find another person willing to do everything I have just done…hope you like it, this isn’t something you can E-bay any time soon!
After turning over all the paperwork and money to the dealer and watching the little suppressor be placed in the gun store safe pending approval, I went home to begin the waiting game. This to me was the test. I had heard everything from 30-180 days or more wait from people on the Internet. The gun store owner assured me it would be more like 60-90 days. Much better, but I wasn’t even sure I’d make it at that. You see, this was all basically a test on my part to see if I would even be approved for such a heavily regulated item, being that I was at one time a convicted felon!
Now I know exactly what you might think when you hear that, trust me I know. Without going to far into detail I was arrested, charged with, pled guilty to and was sentenced for a crime that did not then and to this day does not exist in Washington State.
I was 18, had no money and was raised to believe that the police are there for your benefit. What I came to realize is that people who think they can, will abuse the power given them. An over taxed system will not catch the discrepancy and without money to provide a basal defense an overworked prosecutor (or in this case five different ones) will convince you to plead guilty.
A felony conviction automatically disqualifies you from possessing a firearm. Being raised around guns, having served ten years in the military and now a private military contractor I not only enjoy shooting and hunting but my livelihood requires that I possess firearms.
In Washington State there is a provision to vacate a criminal record if you meet certain criteria after five years from the conviction. When I petitioned the court to vacate my record, the judge looked at the original charge, looked at me, looked back at the file and said “Sir, do you understand that you plead guilty to a crime that does not exist in the state of Washington?” I could have guessed as much. The judge ruled the plea “Void Ab Initio” declared there was no basis for the charge, conviction or subsequent sentence and ordered my records expunged. This did not allow me to own a gun, which is a separate matter even though the charge that kept me from owning guns was factitious to begin with. So I petitioned the same court for a restoration of firearm rights based on the findings that I was wrongfully stripped of those rights in the first place and after a few months was granted a full restoration of firearms privileges.
Whenever you are booked into jail, are arrested, or sentenced that information is sent to the FBI’s central data base. The “rap sheet” is indexed from oldest to newest and a brief description accompanies each entrance to the ledger. For some unknown reason they seem to keep every record of everything you have ever done wrong but the little things like… being exonerated of a crime a policeman simply made up (by the courts own admission) ten years prior, well…sometimes those don’t get added in with the same zeal as the convictions do.
I want you to know that from 1995 to the present date, 2007, I have had absolutely no arrests or criminal activity. I have purchased many guns through gun stores, each time filling out the FBI’s “Brady Bill” paper forms, and having my full information checked by the National Instant Check System or “NICS” (the division established under the Brady Bill to conduct background checks on potential gun buyers using the FBI’s data base.). My FBI files were examined to find any reason to not allow me to purchase a firearm. I have been deigned twice, once in 2003 when they “Lost” the information restoring my firearm privileges and now, right AFTER I was approved for a silencer by the ATF, FBI, Treasury Department and by the same system, NICS, described above.
It was December 23rd, I was visiting family out of state for the holidays and received a phone call from the gun store I had applied for the suppressor license at. It was a voice mail that said “Mr. Smith your tax stamp was approved. You can come in after the holidays and take possession of your suppressor.” WOW! What a Christmas gift. If you do the right thing good things do happen. I could care less about the silencer, this was a redemption of myself, to prove to all those who looked at me as a “criminal” all those years that now I could say “I’m a good guy, the federal government thinks so because they let me have something highly restricted that only people with clean records can have!” It is a physical middle finger to all those people who told me I wouldn’t amount to anything. This was twelve years of hard work, money, trials, paper work and endless hours searching laws and codes to get my pride back.
When I got back into Washington on the 28th I went to the gun store and while the clerk got out my silencer and all the accompanying paperwork I decided to buy a cheap $200 rifle, an over the counter gun that only required filling out a form and a phone call to the FBI’s NICS data base, something I had done and passed time and again with no issue. It took only 5 minutes for the NICS to deny the rifle purchase. I was in shock.
According to the “All knowing Brady Bill National Instant Check System” I somehow was arrested, convicted, sentenced and released for a felony. And this, according to the NICS data base, all happened in a five day period over the Christmas holiday. That’s the only explanation. I didn’t fit the other criteria, I’m not an illegal alien, have never denounced my citizenship, do not have a restraining order or a charge of domestic violence, and I have never been dishonorably discharged from the military (in fact I have two honorable discharges and will shortly have a third). Being a convicted felon is the only disqualifier category I could have ever fit into, but that charge was expunged and my rights restored years ago weren’t they? I mean, the same people now telling me I can’t buy a gun have been selling me an average of one gun a month for the last ten years, in fact I was just approved for a gun by the same NICS system on the 21st of December 2006, just two days before the silencer purchase was approved and not even a week before I am now, magically, banned from buying, owning or even possessing a firearm.
There was no trial, no conviction…not even a faulty arrest on trumped up charges this time. In fact the NICS people (due to privacy laws) won’t even tell me what it is they found on my own record, this is after I submitted fingerprints to verify who I was and begin appealing their decision. I went threw this same situation in 2003, remember? You see, when the Brady Bill was enacted it was feared that the government would compile a data base of everyone who bought a gun and what type of gun they bought. The thinking was that this information could some day be used against gun owners by a “gun grabbing government”. Thanks (or no thanks) to the effective lobbying of the National Rifle Association a provision was included in the creation of the NCIS system that says the FBI are suppose to destroy all “Supplemental records” of the data base files after 24hrs. Well I guess the order expunging my conviction, the void ab Initio sighting the conviction was bogus to begin with and the subsequent restoration of firearm rights are all considered “Supplemental records” by the FBI. I even requested a current copy of my FBI record so I can see if by some chance there was anything that got on there that might be causing the problem. So far they have sent me nothing, just a bunch of bureaucratic automated letters that say they are in “receipt of my appeal and are working diligently to resolve the issue in order to make a determination”….blah, blah, blah…
So here I sit. A clean record, a veteran of every deployment in the last 12yrs., 16 medals, commendations, security clearances from the Army, State Department and several private companies. Approved over 50 times to buy handguns, shotguns and rifles by the NICS system, granted a concealed weapon permit in 6 states over the last 8yrs. And approved of a federal tax stamp to own a silencer and was prevented from buying a $200 rifle because the FBI destroyed legal court documents they claim were “unnecessary” or “supplemental” after retaining and referring to said documents for more than a decade.
You may think this doesn’t apply to you, and you might be right. But someday “they” will make a “mistake” that will affect you and then no one will believe you either.
No one but me that is.
