# ATF history timeline: the National Firearms Act, June 1934

Canonical: https://mobfiles.org/items/atf-timeline-nfa-1934/

ATF's timeline entry for June 1934 says the National Firearms Act "is a direct response to gang violence" and imposed requirements on "machine guns, silencers and sawed-off shotguns." An agency retrospective, not a 1934 record.

The timeline entry for June 1934 reads: "This legislation is a direct response to gang violence, this act imposed criminal, regulatory and tax requirements on weapons favored by gangsters: machine guns, silencers and sawed-off shotguns." Later entries note the Federal Firearms Act of June 1938 and that the Alcohol Tax Unit was commissioned to enforce both acts effective 18 October 1941.

The timeline is a retrospective written by the agency decades afterward. Read it beside the statute itself, which is filed here as its own record, and not in place of it.

## Sources

- Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Our History: https://www.atf.gov/our-history/atf-history-timeline