Four Congresses, One Code: What 1934, 1968, 1986 and 1993 Each Added to Federal Firearms Law

1934 brought the National Firearms Act. 1968 brought the Gun Control Act. 1986 brought the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act. 1993 brought the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. Four Congresses passed them, the 73rd, the 90th, the 99th and the 103rd.

Taxed a defined list and told its owners to register, 1934

The Act is Public No. 474 of the 73rd Congress, approved June 26, 1934. Its text is printed at 48 Stat. 1236. Its long title reads “To provide for the taxation of manufacturers, importers, and dealers in certain firearms and machine guns, to tax the sale or other disposal of such weapons, and to restrict importation and regulate interstate transportation thereof”.

Section 2 made importers, manufacturers and dealers register and pay a special tax. Section 3 laid a transfer tax of $200 on each covered firearm. Section 5 gave anyone already holding one sixty days to register it. The chapter was carried into the Internal Revenue Code, revised in 1968, and sits today at chapter 53 of title 26.

Wrote a new chapter into title 18 and left 1934 alone, June 1968

1968 is two statutes, and the first is not the famous one. The Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 was approved on June 19, at 82 Stat. 197. Its title IV is headed State Firearms Control Assistance. Section 902 opened the chapter. It reads “Title 18, United States Code, is amended by inserting after section 917 thereof the following new chapter”. That chapter was chapter 44, Firearms, opening at section 921.

Section 906 repealed the Federal Firearms Act, the licensing statute of June 30, 1938 at 52 Stat. 1250. Section 904 pointed the other way. Nothing in the title, it said, “shall be construed as modifying or affecting any provision of” the National Firearms Act, chapter 53 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. The 1934 law stayed exactly where it stood.

Rewrote both chapters four months later, October 1968

The Gun Control Act of 1968 is Public Law 90-618, approved on October 22, 1968 at 82 Stat. 1213. Its long title begins “To amend title 18, United States Code”. Amend, not create. Chapter 44 was four months old, and not yet in force, when this Act reached it. Section 201, in title II, revised chapter 53 of title 26. That revision is the National Firearms Act text a reader opens today.

Closed a category and borrowed 1934’s definition of it, 1986

Public Law 99-308 was approved on May 19, 1986, at 100 Stat. 449. Its own section 1(a) names it the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act. The s on Firearms is the statute’s own. More legislation was needed, its findings say, “to reaffirm the intent of the Congress, as expressed in section 101 of the Gun Control Act of 1968”.

Section 101 then added a definition that defines nothing. It reads “The term ‘machinegun’ has the meaning given such term in section 5845(b) of the National Firearms Act (26 U.S.C. 5845(b))”. A 1986 Congress sent the reader to a chapter a 1934 Congress opened. That paragraph sits at 18 U.S.C. 921(a)(24) today.

Section 102(9) added a subsection at the end of 18 U.S.C. 922. It reads “Except as provided in paragraph (2), it shall be unlawful for any person to transfer or possess a machinegun”. Paragraph (2) carries two exceptions, and the second turns on the date the subsection took effect. Section 110 delayed the Act’s amendments by 180 days. Subsection (c) put section 102(9) into effect on the date of enactment, May 19, 1986.

Built an expiration date into the text, 1993

Public Law 103-159 was approved on November 30, 1993, at 107 Stat. 1536. Only its title I is the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. Title III of the same public law is the Federal Firearms License Reform Act of 1993. Title I added two subsections to section 922. Section 102(a) is headed Interim Provision. Section 102(b) is headed Permanent Provision.

The interim one dated itself. Section 922(s)(1) applied beginning 90 days after enactment and ending “on the day before the date that is 60 months after such date of enactment”. Counting from November 30, 1993, that is February 28, 1994 through November 29, 1998. It is still printed in the Code, and by its own terms it reaches nothing.

The permanent one waited on a system rather than a date. Section 922(t)(1) starts thirty days after the Attorney General notifies licensees “that the national instant criminal background check system is established”. Section 103 of the same title ordered that system built within sixty months of enactment, and that section sits today at 34 U.S.C. 40901.

Definitions do a lot of the work in all four. Section 1 of the 1934 Act opens on definitions, and section 921 does that job for the 1968 chapter. How one familiar name lines up against these statutory definitions is its own subject. Each of these Congresses legislated for the federal code alone, and every state kept its own.

This is educational content explaining the legislative record, not commentary on any pending legislation or litigation.