Citation

Leff CS, Leff MH. Ann. Am. Acad. Polit. Soc. Sci. 1981; 455: 48-62.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1981, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The federal firearms legislation proposed and enacted between the two world wars, although a breakthrough in federal activism on the issue, left a neutral legacy for future regulatory efforts. The 1927 statute barred handguns from the U. S. postal system without closing off alternative shipping routes. The National Firearms Act of 1934 ultimately limited its registration provisions to "gangster" weapons, like machine guns. The more inclusive Federal Firearms Act of 1938 proved impossible to effectively enforce. In view of the New Deal Justice Department's ambitious regulatory proposals, which would be considered far-reaching even by later standards, this lackluster record proved decidedly anticlimactic. The minimal impact of federal law was partially rooted in the low enforcement priorities of the Treasury Department and was in part attributable to the influence of a traditional individualist ethos hostile to the "civilizing" pretensions of federal intervention. But just as important as the administrative and cultural barriers to gun control effectiveness was the character of the policymaking process. Anti-regulation forces out-organized Justice Department regulators, with their vaguer public anticrime constituency, and parlayed their intensive commitment into a formidable influence on the legislative outcome. This capacity to circumscribe federal initiatives helped to neutralize the impact of the first federal gun control legislation.