Firearm Owners Protection Act

Firearms Owners' Protection Act of 1986

Long title	An Act to amend chapter 44 (relating to firearms) of title 18, United States Code, and for other purposes.
Acronyms (colloquial)	FOPA
Enacted by	the 99th United States Congress
Effective	May 19, 1986
Citations
Public law	99-308
Statutes at Large	100 Stat. 449
Codification
Acts amended	Gun Control Act of 1968
Titles amended	18 U.S.C.: Crimes and Criminal Procedure 26 U.S.C.: Internal Revenue Code
U.S.C. sections amended	18 U.S.C. ch. 44 § 921 et seq. 18 U.S.C. ch. 40 § 845 I.R.C. ch. 53, subch. A § 5801
Legislative history
Introduced in the Senate as S. 49 by James A. McClure (R–ID) on January 3, 1985 Committee consideration by House Judiciary Passed the Senate on July 9, 1985 (79-15) Passed the House on April 10, 1986 (292-130, in lieu of H.R. 4332) with amendment Senate agreed to House amendment on May 6, 1986 (agreed voice vote) Signed into law by President Ronald Reagan on May 19, 1986

The Firearm Owners' Protection Act of 1986 (FOPA) is a United States federal law that revised many provisions of the Gun Control Act of 1968.

Under the Gun Control Act of 1968, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) was given wide latitude on the enforcement of regulations pertaining to Federal Firearms License (FFL) holders. Allegations of abuse by ATF inspectors soon arose from the National Rifle Association (NRA) and some FFL licensees.

A February 1982 report by a Senate subcommittee that studied the Second Amendment said:

The conclusion is thus inescapable that the history, concept, and wording of the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as its interpretation by every major commentator and court in the first half-century after its ratification, indicates that what is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner.

The report also said that 75 percent of ATF prosecutions "were aimed at ordinary citizens who had neither criminal intent nor knowledge, but were enticed by agents into unknowing technical violations." It suggested that reform of federal firearms law such as proposed in S. 1030 "would be largely self-enforcing" and "would enhance vital protection of constitutional and civil liberties of those Americans who choose to exercise their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms."

The Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986 (FOPA) addressed the abuses noted in the 1982 Senate Judiciary Subcommittee report. Among the reforms intended to loosen restrictions on gun sales were the reopening of interstate sales of long guns on a limited basis, legalization of ammunition shipments through the U.S. Postal Service (a partial repeal of the Gun Control Act), removal of the requirement for record keeping on sales of non-armor-piercing ammunition, and federal protection of transportation of firearms through states where possession of those firearms would otherwise be illegal. However, the Act also contained a provision that banned the sale of machine guns manufactured after the date of enactment to civilians, restricting sales of these weapons to the military and law enforcement. Thus, in the ensuing years, the limited supply of these arms available to civilians has caused an enormous increase in their price, with most costing in excess of $10,000. Regarding these fully automatic firearms owned by private citizens in the U.S., political scientist Earl Kruschke said "approximately 175,000 automatic firearms have been licensed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (the federal agency responsible for administration of the law) and evidence suggests that none of these weapons has ever been used to commit a violent crime."

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