The Hughes Amendment was a last-minute change to the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act that barred private civilians from registering and owning any so-called machine gun produced after May 19, 1986. 

Here’s a quick breakdown of the basic restrictions laid out in the Hughes Amendment.

• Made it illegal for ordinary civilians to own, sell, buy, or register any machine gun manufactured after 1986.
• Left in place the $200 federal NFA tax on any pre-1986 machine gun sales.
• Permanently froze the number of “transferable” machine guns in America at 1986 levels.
• Allowed exceptions for law enforcement and the military.
• Allowed licensed dealers and manufacturers with a Special Occupational Tax to possess “dealer sample” or “post sample” machine guns.

The amendment was introduced by Democrat Rep. William J. Hughes and passed by an unrecorded voice vote to avoid scrutiny just before the FOPA became law. It effectively turned once-common firearms that had long been for sale on the commercial market into increasingly scarce and costly collectibles. 

Over the last 40 years, this has forced the cost of legacy pre-1986 machine guns to skyrocket.

While owning a machine gun is still technically legal, even entry-level pre-1986 automatic or select-fire firearms are now well outside most people’s budgets, routinely demanding more than $20,000 at sale or auction.
 

Why Hughes Should End Now

Hughes lazily argued that the amendment was about public safety, even though legally owned machine guns were very rarely used in criminal activity when the law was passed – much less today. 

He simply argued, “I do not know why anyone would object to the banning of machine guns,” while admitting the goal of the law was to essentially end all private machine gun ownership over time. It was a bootleg, death-by-generational-restrictions strategy. Overnight, machine gun ownership became a world of “haves” and “have nots,” with all future American gun owners tossed to the curb.

In short, the Hughes Amendment blatantly and pointlessly violates gun owners’ rights.

• No Safety Value: It did nothing to address actual crime statistics at the time or now.
• Redundant: Existing laws, like the National Firearms Act, already cover background checks, define and punish illegal uses of firearms, and bar gun ownership for felons.
• Unconstitutional: It clearly violates the Second Amendment’s “shall not be infringed” provision.
• Economic Lawfare: It explicitly seeks to price ordinary civilians out of the market while intentionally allowing those with more expendable wealth to skirt the restriction.
• Potentially Fraudulent: Given the snap, unrecorded voice vote and many dissenters, it’s entirely possible this amendment never actually received enough votes.

Clearly, killing private machine gun ownership and a significant part of American gun culture was the entire point, not public safety. 

Further, the amendment fundamentally disregarded the reality of law-breaking criminals ignoring such rules, even as it punished law-abiding gun owners. It was also improperly passed by an unrecorded and disputed voice vote. 

A shouting match erupted on the floor of the House of Representatives when Democrat Rep. Charles Rangel called for a voice vote on the Hughes Amendment. Some representatives even claimed that the “nays” carried the vote before Rangel unilaterally signaled that the Hughes Amendment had passed. He ignored calls for a re-vote and gaveled the amendment into law.

While gun owners can now at least look to the recently proposed Firearm Freedom Act for hope in overturning the Hughes Amendment, previous attempts to end this controversial restriction on gun rights have historically failed, even after gathering hundreds of thousands of supporting signatures. 

Until the amendment is removed from the law, all gun owners are forced to live under a burdensome, redundant, ineffective, and potentially dishonest piece of legislation that – for all its other faults – violates their Second Amendment rights.