Interesting video. Sounds like Tulsi is getting paranoid about Biden weaponization of government agencies. Makes me think that maybe she knows something that us regular guys can only speculate on.
That's what i was wondering. She used to be on the "inside" of the Swamp, so logically she knows more about the inner workings of the Dems in Congress than those of us on the outside.
Additionally, if i were personally rethinking everything I once believed about gun control and government treatment of gun owners as she says she is, I'd likely do research into all the things I used to accept on face value, such as the real purpose of the NFA and ATF.
The ATF has been in the news lately doing a lot of sketchy stuff under color of "rule making" -- a practice that's now become something resembling lawmaking. Perhaps that's also on her radar as she has become more of a 2A advocate?
In Congress, I'm sure the party dictated how she was supposed to vote on national issues. Hopefully she's now going back and reviewing not only the gun control laws she helped pass, but also the laws that came before which others have piled on since the 1930s.
I don't agree with Braden's (in the video) theory that her suggesting that maybe it's time for the NFA and ATF to no longer exist is a massive swing from a gun control position. Too many agencies and laws were created long, long ago and over time morphed into something totally different.
NFA was a tax plan to make certain firearms too expensive for the average gun owner. Suppressors were added because (from what I read) someone believed it made poaching easier. Nothing at all about their use for killing humans.
The long title for NFA is "
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."
The $200 tax was quite prohibitive at the time (equivalent to $4,555 in 2023).
With a few exceptions, the tax amount is unchanged
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Firearms_Act$200 is barely a blip in most gun owners' budgets today. We spend that for cellular phone service over a couple of months based on surveys (average is $114/month).
As for the ATF, they originally were a tax enforcement agency (I'm seeing a pattern here). That function was part of the IRS, and they were primarily involved in enforcing laws regarding alcohol and tobacco such as moonshining and bootleg operations -- importing & selling alcohol/tobacco products without the proper tax stamps (i.e. payments).
The taxation of alcohol started in 1791. In 1861, the IRS was created within the Department of the Treasury. They mostly enforced alcohol and tobacco tax laws, since those two industries brought in a lot of tax revenue. The functions of alcohol and tobacco enforcement shifted from the Treasury Department to the Department of Justice in 1930. Throughout the era of prohibition and its repeal, the enforcement of these areas continually changed and their enforcement powers were increased.
In 1972, the ATF was officially created. So, if you look at it from a historical perspective, the ATF is a relatively new agency. It would be simple to disband it and hand off the taxation enforcement functions to the DOJ and/or IRS again. Since taxation has always been the primary reason for the laws under the ATF, that can naturally be done within the IRS. All these new firearm rules are nothing but mission creep. Most of those rules go beyond the scope of existing law, which is illegal/unconstitutional. That function (gun regulations) can and should be handled by Congress. We already have a federal agency that enforces laws -- it's the FBI. The ATF is redundant.
Anyway, that's a long explanation as to why I think any reasoning human being who looks at these two issues would not have to be a staunch 2A supporter to grasp how much the NFA and ATF have strayed from their original intent.I think
slippery slope would not be an inaccurate description of what we've seen happen.