The Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA or GCA68)[1] is a U.S. federal law that regulates the firearms industry and firearms ownership. Due to constitutional limitations, the Act is primarily based on regulating interstate commerce in firearms by generally prohibiting interstate firearms transfers except by manufacturers, dealers and importers licensed under a scheme set up under the Act.
The bill was initially prompted by the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1963.[3] The President was shot and killed with a rifle purchased by mail order from an ad in the magazine American Rifleman.[4] Congressional hearings followed and a ban on mail-order gun sales was discussed, but no law was passed until 1968. At the hearings NRA Executive Vice-President Franklin Orth supported a ban on mail-order sales, stating, "We do not think that any sane American, who calls himself an American, can object to placing into this bill the instrument which killed the president of the United States."[5][6]
Precursors of the passage of the Gun Control Act were Senate Bill 1975[7] in 1963, "A Bill to Regulate the Interstate Shipment of Firearms", and Senate Bill 1592 in 1965, "A Bill to Amend the Federal Firearms Act of 1938". Both were introduced by Senator Thomas J. Dodd but in both cases the bill was met with fierce opposition, effectively shutting down the earliest efforts for gun control legislation regarding the mail-order rifles. The bill was once again introduced into the House of Representatives by the House Judiciary Committee on January 10, 1967[8], with this instance resulting in the bill staying on the legislative docket.[9][10]
The April 4, 1968, assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., shortly followed by the June 5 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, as well as the shooting at the University of Texas two years previously, compounded by shifting societal attitudes towards gun ownership, renewed efforts to pass the bill.[5] On June 11, 1968, a tie vote in the House Judiciary Committee halted the bill's passage.[11] On reconsideration nine days later, the bill was passed by the committee. The Senate Judiciary Committee similarly brought the bill to a temporary halt, but as in the House, it was passed on reconsideration.[12] House Resolution 17735, known as the Gun Control Act, was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on October 22, 1968[13] banning mail-order sales of rifles and shotguns and prohibiting most felons, drug users, and people found mentally incompetent from buying guns.[14][15]This act also included provisions that redefined the definitions of firearms within the United States and provided more rules for weapons manufacturers and licensed sellers on interstate commerce of ammunition and other firearm accessories.[16]
Prohibited persons
When it took effect in 1968, the Gun Control Act of 1968 stated that firearm sales were prohibited to anyone who "(1) is under indictment for, or has been convicted in a court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year; (2) is a fugitive from justice; (3) is an unlawful user of or addicted to marihuana or any depressant or stimulant drug (as defined in section 201 (v) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act) or narcotic drug (as defined in section 4731 (a) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954)"[17]
The Gun Control Act of 1968 was amended in 1993 by the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act which introduced a background check requirement of prospective gun purchasers by licensed sellers, and created a list of categories of individuals to whom the sale of firearms is prohibited:[18] It would also be amended again in 1994 by the Violence Against Women Act to strengthen firearm bans against domestic abusers.[19] The amended law stated:
It shall be unlawful for any person to sell or otherwise dispose of any firearm or ammunition to any person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that such person—
(1) is under indictment for, or has been convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year;
(2) is a fugitive from justice;
(3) is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance (as defined in section 102 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 802));
(4) has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution;
(5) who, being an alien;
(A) is illegally or unlawfully in the United States; or
(B) except as provided in subsection (y)(2), has been admitted to the United States under a nonimmigrant visa (as that term is defined in section 101(a)(26) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101 (a)(26)))
(6) who has been discharged from the Armed Forces under dishonorable conditions;
(7) who, having been a citizen of the United States, has renounced their citizenship;
(8) is subject to a court order that restrains such person from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner of such person or child of such intimate partner or person, or engaging in other conduct that would place an intimate partner in reasonable fear of bodily injury to the partner or child, except that this paragraph shall only apply to a court order that—
(A) was issued after a hearing of which such person received actual notice, and at which such person had the opportunity to participate; and
(B)
(i) includes a finding that such person represents a credible threat to the physical safety of such intimate partner or child; or
(ii) by its terms explicitly prohibits the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against such intimate partner or child that would reasonably be expected to cause bodily injury; or
(9) has been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.
(ii) A person shall not be considered to have been convicted of such an offense for purposes of this chapter if the conviction has been expunged or set aside, or is an offense for which the person has been pardoned or has had civil rights restored (if the law of the applicable jurisdiction provides for the loss of civil rights under such an offense) unless the pardon, expungement, or restoration of civil rights expressly provides that the person may not ship, transport, possess, or receive firearms.
18 U.S.C 922 (3) imposes punishment for being a drug addict, which was found to be unconstitutional by SCOTUS in Robinson v. California in 1962.
While many states upon completion of a sentence automatically reinstate rights to vote, sit on a jury, or serve in public office, no states restore gun ownership rights upon completion of a sentence.[21] Some states reinstate rights depending on the crime convicted of, and others have a petition process. Those convicted of a federal offense must contact the Office of the Pardon Attorney, Department of Justice, to receive a presidential pardon. Under the Department's rules governing petitions for executive clemency, 28 C.F.R. §§ 1.1 et seq., an applicant must satisfy a minimum waiting period of five years before he becomes eligible to apply for a presidential pardon of his federal conviction.
According to a 21 Sep 2011 "Open Letter to All Federal Firearms Licensees" from the ATF, holders of state-issued medical marijuana cards are automatically "prohibited people" under 18 U.S.C 922 (g)(3) and "shipping, transporting, receiving or possessing firearms or ammunition" by a medical marijuana card holder is a violation.[22]
Additionally, 18 U.S.C 922 (x) generally prohibits people under 18 years of age from possessing handguns or handgun ammunition with certain exceptions for employment, target practice, education, and a handgun possessed while defending the home of the juvenile or a home in which they are a guest.[23]
The Violence Against Women Act of 1994 strengthened bans against domestic abusers by enforcing domestic violence protection orders which barred people subject to family violence protection orders from having firearms.[19]
The Gun Control Act mandated the licensing of individuals and companies engaged in the business of selling firearms. This provision effectively prohibited the direct mail order of firearms (except antique firearms) by consumers and mandated that anyone who wants to buy a gun in an interstate transaction from a source other than a private individual must do so through a federally licensed firearms dealer. The Act also banned unlicensed individuals from acquiring handguns outside their state of residence. The interstate purchase of long guns (rifles and shotguns) was not impeded by the Act so long as the seller is federally licensed and such a sale is allowed by both the state of purchase and the state of residence.
Private sales between residents of two different states are also prohibited without going through a licensed dealer, except for the case of a buyer holding a Curio & Relic license purchasing a firearm that qualifies as a curio or relic.
Private sales between unlicensed individuals who are residents of the same state are allowed under federal law so long as such transfers do not violate the other existing federal and state laws. While current law mandates that a background check be performed if the seller has a federal firearms license, private parties living in the same state are not required to perform such checks under federal law.
A person who does not have a Federal Firearms License may not be in the business of buying or selling firearms. Individuals buying and selling firearms without a federal license must be doing so from their collection.
Under the Gun Control Act, a federally licensed importer, manufacturer, dealer, or collector shall not sell or deliver any rifle or shotgun or ammunition for rifle or shotgun to any individual less than 18 years of age, nor any handgun or ammunition for a handgun to any individual less than 21 years of age.[24]
Gunsmith and factory repair exception
While the Gun Control Act prohibits the direct mail-ordering of firearms, a person may ship a gun via contract carrier (such as United Parcel Service (UPS), United States Postal Service, or FedEx) to a gunsmith (who has an FFL) or the gunmaker's factory for repairs or modification. After the repair work is done, the gunsmith or the factory can ship the gun directly back to the customer.
The GCA created what is known as the "sporting purposes" standard for imported firearms, saying that they must "be generally recognized as particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes". GCA sporting purposes include hunting and organized competitive target shooting but do not include "plinking" or "practical shooting" (which the ATF says is closer to police/combat-style competition and not comparable to more traditional types of sports), nor does it allow for collection for historical or design interest.[25][26]:16–18
Marking requirements
The law also required that all newly manufactured firearms produced by licensed manufacturers in the United States and imported into the United States bear a gun serial number. Firearms manufactured before the Gun Control Act and firearms manufactured by non-FFLs remain exempt from the serial number requirement. Defacement or removal of the serial number (if present) became a felony offense under the law where previously no serial number was required.
Commentary
In a June 1966 essay, Neal Knox wrote that what was then called the Dodd Bill was opposed by outdoorsmen and conservationists Harry R. Woodward, C. R. Gutermuth of the Wildlife Management Institute, Richard H. Stroud of the Sport Fishing Institute, Howard Carter Jr. of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, E. C. Hadley of the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute, Robert T. Dennis of the Izaak Walton League, "and countless other sportsmen, and sportsmen and industry groups" because it would have a far-reaching and damaging effect on the hunting and shooting sports, while failing to reduce crime.[27]
In his remarks upon signing the act in October 1968, Johnson said:
"Congress adopted most of our recommendations. But this bill—as big as this bill is—still falls short, because we just could not get the Congress to carry out the requests we made of them. I asked for the national registration of all guns and the licensing of those who carry those guns. For the fact of life is that there are over 160 million guns in this country—more firearms than families. If guns are to be kept out of the hands of the criminal, out of the hands of the insane, and out of the hands of the irresponsible, then we just must have licensing. If the criminal with a gun is to be tracked down quickly, then we must have registration in this country. The voices that blocked these safeguards were not the voices of an aroused nation. They were the voices of a powerful lobby, a gun lobby, that has prevailed for the moment in an election year."[13]
At the time of its passage in 1968, NRA executive vice president Franklin Orth wrote in American Rifleman that "the measure as a whole appears to be one that the sportsmen of America can live with".[28]:95[29]
In a 2011 article noting the death of former U.S. Senator James A. McClure, the NRA called provisions of the GCA "draconian".[32] McClure was a cosponsor of the Firearm Owners Protection Act (FOPA) of 1986, also called the McClure-Volkmer Act.[32]
Political scientist Robert Spitzer wrote in 2011 that the Gun Control Act of 1968 "provides an ideal case study to highlight the political processes affecting a direct effort to regulate firearms".[33] He also stated in his book that President Johnson's proposal called for national registration of all guns as well as licensing for all gun carriers,[13] but his influence over the enacted law was small.[33] House Rules Committee chair William Colmer only released H.R. 17735 to the floor after Judiciary Committee chair Emanuel Celler promised to oppose efforts to add licensing and registration provisions.[34]
The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, often referred to as the Brady Act, the Brady Bill or the Brady Handgun Bill, is an Act of the United States Congress that mandated federal background checks on firearm purchasers in the United States. It also imposed a five-day waiting period on purchases until the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) was implemented in 1998. Introduced by U.S. representative Chuck Schumer of New York, the Brady Act was a landmark legislative enactment during the Clinton administration. The act was appended to the end of Section 922 of title 18, United States Code. The intention of the act was to prevent persons with previous serious convictions from purchasing firearms.
The Domestic Violence Offender Gun Ban, often called the "Lautenberg Amendment", is an amendment to the Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act of 1997, enacted by the 104th United States Congress in 1996, which bans access to firearms for life by people convicted of crimes of domestic violence. The act is often referred to as "the Lautenberg Amendment" after its sponsor, Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ). Lautenberg proposed the amendment after a decision from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, involving underenforcement of domestic violence laws brought under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. President Bill Clinton signed the law as part of the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 1997.
The National Firearms Act (NFA), 73rd Congress, Sess. 2, ch. 757, 48 Stat. 1236 was enacted on June 26, 1934, and currently codified and amended as I.R.C. ch. 53. The law is an Act of Congress in the United States that, in general, imposes an excise tax on the manufacture and transfer of certain firearms and mandates the registration of those firearms. The NFA is also referred to as Title II of the federal firearms laws, with the Gun Control Act of 1968 ("GCA") as Title I.
Small v. United States, 544 U.S. 385 (2005), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States involving 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), which makes it illegal to possess a firearm for individuals previously "convicted in any court" of crimes for which they could have been sentenced to more than one year in prison. The Court ruled, in a five to three decision, that "any court" does not include those in foreign countries. This decision resolved a circuit split on the issue, and reversed the lower ruling of the Third Circuit that the law did apply to foreign convictions.
The Firearm Owners' Protection Act (FOPA) of 1986 is a United States federal law that revised many provisions of the Gun Control Act of 1968.
A federal firearms license (FFL) is a license in the United States that enables an individual or a company to engage in a business pertaining to the manufacture or importation of firearms and ammunition, or the interstate and intrastate sale of firearms. Holding an FFL to engage in certain such activities has been a legal requirement within the United States since the enactment of the Gun Control Act of 1968. The FFL is issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives
A Firearms Transaction Record, or ATF Form 4473, is a seven-page form prescribed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) required to be completed when a person proposes to purchase a firearm from a Federal Firearms License (FFL) holder, such as a gun dealer.
The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) is a background check system in the United States created by the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 to prevent firearm sales to people prohibited under the Act. The system was launched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1998. Under the system, firearm dealers, manufacturers or importers who hold a Federal Firearms License (FFL) are required to undertake a NICS background check on prospective buyers before transferring a firearm. The NICS is not intended to be a gun registry, but is a list of persons prohibited from owning or possessing a firearm. By law, upon successfully passing the background check, the buyer's details are to be discarded and a record on NICS of the firearm purchase is not to be made. However as an FFL holder, the seller is required to keep a record of the transaction.
The Gun-Free School Zones Act (GFSZA) is an act of the U.S. Congress prohibiting any unauthorized individual from knowingly possessing a loaded or unsecured firearm at a place that the individual knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, is a school zone as defined by 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(26). The law applies to public, private, and parochial elementary schools and high schools, and to non-private property within 1,000 feet (300 m) of them. It provides that the states and their political subdivisions may issue licenses that exempt the licensed individuals from the prohibition.
The gun show loophole is the absence of laws mandating background checks for certain private sales of firearms in the United States. The term gun show loophole, in some cases, refers to "a situation in which many sellers dealing in firearms offer them for sale at gun shows without becoming licensed or subjecting purchasers to background checks", while in others it refers more generally to the broader private sale exemption in U.S. federal gun law, which allows non-commercial gun sales by private parties without a background check. Regardless of the context of a sale, private sales to buyers known or suspected of being prohibited from possessing firearms and "straw purchases" by others on behalf of prohibited purchasers are illegal. The background check system and the private sale exemption were established by the 1993 Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, commonly known as the Brady Bill. Under the Brady Bill anyone not "engaged in the business" of selling firearms is not required to obtain a background check on buyers seeking to purchase firearms from a seller's private collection. Along with federal laws for firearms purchases, there are also local and state laws regulating background check requirements for the purchase of firearms.
In the United States, the right to keep and bear arms is modulated by a variety of state and federal statutes. These laws generally regulate the manufacture, trade, possession, transfer, record keeping, transport, and destruction of firearms, ammunition, and firearms accessories. They are enforced by state, local and the federal agencies which include the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
Title II weapons, or NFA firearms, are designations of certain weapons under the United States National Firearms Act (NFA).
Gun laws in Oklahoma regulate the sale, possession, and use of firearms and ammunition in the state of Oklahoma in the United States.
Gun laws in Nevada regulate the sale, possession, and use of firearms and ammunition in the state of Nevada in the United States.
Gun laws in North Carolina regulate the sale, possession, and use of firearms and ammunition in the U.S. state of North Carolina.
Gun laws in Ohio regulate the sale, possession, and use of firearms and ammunition in the U.S. state of Ohio.
Gun laws in Pennsylvania regulate the sale, possession, and use of firearms and ammunition in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the United States.
Gun laws in Texas regulate the sale, possession, and use of firearms and ammunition in the U.S. state of Texas.
The Federal Firearms Act of 1938 (FFA) imposed a federal license requirement on gun manufacturers, importers, and persons in the business of selling firearms. The term federal firearms licensee (FFL) is used to refer to those on whom the license requirement is imposed. The "FFL" abbreviation is also used to refer to the license itself.
Abramski v. United States, 573 U.S. 169 (2014), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court found that making arrangements for a straw purchase of a gun is in violation of the Gun Control Act of 1968, and is different from re-selling or gifting a previously purchased gun. In the Abramski case, a former police officer from Virginia took advantage of a local discount to buy a gun for his uncle and later transferred it to Pennsylvania—the uncle's residence—using the appropriate federal procedure. During the purchase, Abramski falsely declared that he was purchasing the gun for himself.
1 2 Norell, James O. E. (2011). "Passing of a Legend". nrapublications.org. National Rifle Association. Archived from the original on May 6, 2012. Retrieved July 5, 2014.
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