by Andrew at the Vuurwapen Blog has a very, very interesting post on this bill and the Hughes Amendment. The Hughes Amendment is the part of the bill that froze the number of machine guns available to be licensed under the National Firearms Act to what existed before this bill was passed.
There’s always been a rumor about it being a late night voice vote that really didn’t have the requisite number of votes to pass, but was ordered to be added anyway.
Now, however, thanks to the detective work of a man who goes by the name AJAX22, we’re finding out that a recorded vote was taken, and the amendment was defeated – but again, it was ordered to be added anyway.
Who was instrumental in this action? None other than Charlie Rangel, then acting as Speaker of the House – the disgraced, corrupt New York congressman who was recently censured on the floor of the House. Are we really surprised that a person of such low “moral caliber” would falsify records to ensure that a law he favored would pass, directly subverting the democratic process? I’m not.
There is some controversy about the vote, the full transcript of which can be found here.
Go to Andrew’s blog and read the whole thing. Even more importantly, follow his links.
Update: There was some confusion about the second vote and I’ve updated the quote from Vuurwapen Blog to reflect that. Also see the second comment below for more of an explanation.
Seems like that amendment would be ripe to be challenged from two legal standpoints. 1) Corrupt congressman that calls a vote, and 2) from a Constitutional stand point that a discriminatory towards the 2nd A.
I don't know if I'd ever be able to afford to shoot a fully auto FAL / SCAR, but I would love to have a fully auto AK.
Ohhhhhh, the day when we can over turn this bad law!
The confusion regarding the votes is partially based on my (ajax22) initial miss reading of the congressional transcript.
After going over it a bit more I did a more thourough breakdown of the sequence which can be found here;
http://www.calguns.net/calgunforum/showthread.php?t=364163
It solves the question of why the two recorded votes were the way they were (the first one was the Hughes amendment which was defeated, the second was the bill itself which was passed)
But it does not address the mysterious voice vote which occured (unchallenged) in between, in which Rangel declares that the Hughes amendment has passes, even though no discussion or debate on it had occured and five min earlier it was defeated by a wide margin in a recorded vote