The National Rifle Association (NRA), the main gun lobby, has refused to consider any common sense gun reforms following several mass shootings. It has instead chosen to be the primary group working to block reforms.
But the NRA wasn’t always so extreme. In fact, for the majority of its 141 year history, the organization backed gun regulation and rarely if ever claimed that regulations were unconstitutional.
In 1934, the group’s president Karl T. Frederick testified in support of certain gun regulations that later made it into the National Firearms Act of 1934, one of the first federal gun laws. The law regulated “gangster weapons” used by organized crime, such as machine guns and short barrel shotguns.
During the testimony, Congressman Clemon T. Dickinson of Missouri asked Frederick if he thought anything being debated was unconstitutional. Although Frederick replied that he thought firearm regulation was a state issue, he also said he had not “given it any study from that point of view” that regulating guns may be unconstitutional.
Frederick also explained his view about practical gun ownership, one that would be heretical among NRA leadership today:
Ai??I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons. I seldom carry one. I have when I felt it was desirable to do so for my own protection. I know that applies in most of the instances where guns are used effectively in self-defense or in places of business and in the home. I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.
Frederick did caution against over-regulating weapons during his testimony, but as the transcript above demonstrates, did not oppose all new gun regulations.
The NRA also went on to support the Gun Control Act of 1968. In …