National Firearms Act of 1934

National Firearms Act

Long title	An Act 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.
Acronyms (colloquial)	NFA
Nicknames	National Firearms Act of 1934
Enacted by	the 73rd United States Congress
Effective	June 26, 1934
Citations
Public law	73-474
Statutes at Large	48 Stat. 1236
Codification
Titles amended	26 U.S.C.: Internal Revenue Code
U.S.C. sections created	I.R.C. ch. 53 § 5801 et seq.
Legislative history
Introduced in the House as H.R. 9741 by Robert L. Doughton (D–NC) on May 28, 1934 Committee consideration by House Ways and Means, Senate Finance Passed the House on June 13, 1934 (Passed) Passed the Senate on June 18, 1934 (Passed) Signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 26, 1934

The National Firearms Act (NFA), 73rd Congress, Sess. 2, ch. 757, 48 Stat. 1236, enacted on June 26, 1934, currently codified as amended as I.R.C. ch. 53, is an Act of Congress in the United States that, in general, imposes a statutory excise tax on the manufacture and transfer of certain firearms and mandates the registration of those firearms. The Act was passed shortly after the repeal of Prohibition. The NFA is also referred to as Title II of the Federal firearms laws. The Gun Control Act of 1968 ("GCA") is Title I.

All transfers of ownership of registered NFA firearms must be done through the federal NFA registry. The NFA also requires that permanent transport of NFA firearms across state lines by the owner must be reported to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Temporary transport of some items, most notably silencers, do not need to be reported.

The impetus for the National Firearms Act of 1934 was the gangland crime of the Prohibition era, such as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929, and the attempted assassination of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. Like the current National Firearms Act (NFA), the 1934 Act required NFA firearms to be registered and taxed. The $200 tax was quite prohibitive at the time (equivalent to $3,581 in 2016). With a few exceptions, the tax amount is unchanged.

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