Wickens Presents Thesis on the National Firearms Act
Posted Dec 18, 2025
Collin Wickens wrote a white paper on the National Firearms Act as his senior thesis. Wickens, from Arlington, TN, is an outspoken supporter of the Second Amendment and used the thesis to study something very important to him and many others.
The National Firearms Act of 1934 was passed in response to Prohibition and the rise of organized crime. The Act's main goal was curbing the use of guns commonly used by organized crime like the Thompson Submachine Gun (aka Tommy). The law did not outright ban the guns but instead required registration and a $200 tax stamp ($4,800 in today's dollars. Congress designed the tax stamp to discourage the purchase of these weapons.
Wickens identified multiple problems with the law. The primary problem is that the language defining the guns subject to the tax is very vague. The vaguness gives the ATF broad discretion to regulate these weapons. Moreover, the law and its regulations sometimes lead to arrests for technical violations, when people were unsure if they had broken the law. Moreover, most guns are committed with handguns, which may suggest the regulations on these weapons may not matter much. The vagueness has led to controversies in the gun community over pistol braces, forced reset triggers, suppressors, and short barreled rifes. The result is that ATF has a poor reputation among gun owners becasue of scandals involving Operation Fast and Furious, Ruby Ridge, tandhe Branch Davidian siege in Waco.
After reviewing this history, Wickens identified three reforms: outright repeal, reform the NFA to be clearly restrictive (clear on what is restricted), or reform the NFA to be clearly permissive (allow guns in "commonn usage"). His criteria for judging the reforms was prevention of inconsistent enforcement, protecting civil liberties, public safety, implementation costs, and restoring public trust. He concluded that repeal would prevent inconsistent enforcement, protect civil liberties, allow ATF to go over violent criminals instead of gunowners, be cheap to implement, and little effect on public trust. Reforming the NFA would remove ambiguity, violate Second Amendment rights, would have no influence on crime, would have large up-front costs for registering more firearms, and would be seen by many gun owners as an expansion of federal authority. The reform to be permissive would end the vagueness, protect Second Amendment rights, not influence crime, have some administrative costs, and would step back from overreach. Wickens concluded that the reform to be permissive would be best because it would drop some guns in "common usage" to be dropped from regulation while still restricting machine guns, the greatest concern.