May 19th is important this year. Yes, that is Idaho’s Primary Election, the cutoff for your constitutional right to select judges, and to nominate candidates for the Fall general election. But that is not the only “event” that day.
This May 19 also marks exactly 40 years since the passage of “the single biggest deregulation of guns in U.S. history.” On May 19, 1986, Ronald Reagan signed into law the Firearm Owners Protection Act (FOPA, a.k.a. the McClure-Volkmer Act).
In that one Act of Congress, gun controls enacted throughout the 1960s were swept away, transport of firearms nationally was normalized, and the creation of a national “gun-owner” registry was comprehensively banned. It was a watershed for America’s Second Amendment rights, a tipping point marking the end of a long era of progressively stricter gun controls.
I had the privilege of working on Senate staff in D.C. when FOPA was drafted, debated and passed. My vantage point was close as my boss’s seatmate and fellow Idahoan, Senator James McClure, who had made the key provisions in the bill his personal lifetime goals.
McClure-Volkmer is an interesting example of why “vote ratings” don’t substitute for common sense. FOPA was the crowning achievement of the National Rifle Association, whose “grade” is possibly the most influential in America and had been for decades. And yet that bill contains one of the most enduring “gun bans” ever enacted, the ban on fully automatic “machine guns.”
The machine gun ban was added at the last minute when Rep. Bill Hughes, a New Jersey liberal, moved to add on a voice vote a prohibition on civilians “possessing” any machine gun manufactured after the bill became law. Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-New York) was “subbing” in the Speaker’s chair and asked for the “yeas and nays.” A resounding “nay” echoed through the room, but Rangel announced the amendment passed (according to his “ears”).
Historians have since reconstructed from Republican and Democratic whip records that the amendment, if “roll call voted,” would have failed. It was a “poison pill” that, in the end, Ronald Reagan, Senate Republicans, and the NRA decided to swallow. Gun Owners of America (GOA) deemed it an unconstitutional denial of a basic American right, and opposed FOPA entirely because of it.
Lesson One: Legislative leadership absolutely controls what does and doesn’t get a “roll call vote.” When you base your decisions on someone’s collection of roll call votes, you are already being influenced by the agenda of select politicians, some of whom are working against you.
1986 was an influential year on gun control for another reason. That year, Congress passed the Law Enforcement Officers Protection Act (a.k.a. Cop-Killer Bullet bill). Originally banning “any round that can penetrate Kevlar,” the NRA had negotiated it down to a very limited number of “metal‑core handgun projectiles.” Rifle ammo was exempt, as were many rounds used in shooting sports and hunting. Gun Owners of America still opposed the bill.
The vote on the Senate floor was 99 to 1, the one being my boss, Senator Steve Symms of Idaho. He knew the bill would pass; the NRA had already won 99 percent of the fight. The remaining “armor-piercing” rounds were primarily industrial, used to remove clinkers adhering to the sides of blast furnaces. But Symms believed a losing fight, if for correct principles, was worth it.
He was proven right. No politician today is proud that they “banned ammunition.” Real forensics reveal that wooden bullets can, with targeted force and enough velocity, pierce Kevlar armor, so the whole premise of the bill was flawed. The law has not saved a single life, and the tally of law enforcement officers annually injured or fatally shot has quadrupled.
So whose vote rating should I believe? NRA’s? Or GOA’s?
Lesson Two: In truth, our self-governing Republic needs people focused on both effectiveness (NRA) and principle (GOA). Both are helpful, both inform us, but neither substitutes for our own reasoning and judgement.