Gun Control Works

In 1934, The National Firearms Act was passed which was aimed at regulating  machine guns, sawed-off shotguns, silencers, and other firearms used by criminals.  The NFA required that all machine guns were  to be registered.  Additionally, all people who wanted to own these items were to be fingerprinted and submitted to an extensive and time-consuming—this was long before the Internet— background check; and local Law Enforcement was also required to give permission for ownership.

The NFA is relevant to the current debate because it is a strong and comprehensive gun-control law. But the NRA continually argues that gun-control laws are ineffective. This loudly declared claim has also given rise to their widely proclaimed slogan: WHEN GUNS ARE OUTLAWED, ONLY OUTLAWS WILL HAVE GUNS...

But here are the numbers. Machine gun use in crimes now is negligible. ATF data from 1994 reveals that machine guns accounted for less than 0.1 percent of all guns traced to crime in that year. In 2000, forty-six cities conducted a comprehensive tracing of their crime guns, and they found in only twelve cities that machine guns constituted 0.1 percent of their crime guns. In Las Vegas alone the number was higher; there, machine guns made up 0.5 percent of all crime guns.

Even the "pro-gun" side concedes that these laws have been effective.