Machine gun crime before 1934(a statistics question)

[RBrudzynski]

21. Possible Sources of Automatic Weapon Crime

You probably won't find any reliable pre-1934 statistics.

If there were hearings on the National Firearms Act prior to its passage in 1934, you might be able to locate some testimony by officials about the extent of machine gun use in crime. Finding this information would take either a Herculean effort or the services of a professional researcher.

I'd note that, since the passage of the National Firearms Act, the use of automatic weapons (machine guns) by criminals or psychopathic killers has been very rare. A straight-forward amendment of the 1934 National Firearms Act to include semi-automatic assault rifles, semi-automatic handguns, high-capacity magazines and body armor may well produce the same beneficial results that we have seen with machine guns - a dramatic reduction in criminal use.

The beauty of the 1934 National Firearms Act is that it is NOT a ban; therefore, the law does not run afoul of the "just compensation" clause of the Constitution which would require the government to pay for confiscated weapons. As long as the owner is licensed, the weapon registered, and the any transfer to a new owner pre-approved, there is no obligation for the government to compensate the owner. Weapons that are not registered in accordance with the law are contraband and can be confiscated without compensation.