ATF history timeline: the National Firearms Act, June 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.

Date: 1934-06
Kind: agency-history
Source: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Our History
Retrieved: 2026-10-12
Rights: ATF web text, a work of the United States government, public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105.

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.

itemNational Firearms Act, ch. 757, 48 Stat. 1236 (Public, No. 474, 73d Congress), approved 26 June 1934The statute "to provide for the taxation of manufacturers, importers, and dealers in certain firearms and machine guns." It defines "firearm" and "machine gun," sets occupational taxes of $500, $200 and $300, and a transfer tax of $200 for each firearm.itemATF historical article: the Alcohol Tax Unit, Bureau of Internal Revenue, 1934-1951ATF's history of its post-Repeal predecessor says "Machine guns continued to be the weapon of choice for these criminals" and that the Alcohol Tax Unit enforced the 1934 and 1938 firearms acts, "marking the first enforcement responsibilities for firearms."