Texas Bill to Restore Legal Status to SBRs

AmmoLand ^ | May 30, 2025 | Dean Weingarten

[marktwain]

In Texas statutes, Section 46.05(a) lists some items that are forbidden to knowingly possess, manufacture, repair, or sell. The statute includes short-barreled firearms, which have been heavily regulated by the federal government since 1934. SB1596 strikes short-barreled firearms from the list of prohibited items. From SB1596:

Any of the following items, unless the item is registered in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record maintained by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms andExplosives or otherwise not subject to that registration requirement or unless the item is classified as a curio or relic by the United States Department of Justice:

(A)  an explosive weapon; or 

(B) a machine gun; [or

(C)  a short-barrel firearm;

Short-barreled firearms were in common use before 1934. Most people will immediately see the silliness of this rule. Handguns are protected by the Second Amendment. Handguns are short-barreled firearms. 

How is it that handguns are not regulated by the law regulating short-barreled rifles and shotguns?

The answer goes back to 1934. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was President. He had appointed Montana Senator Thomas Walsh as Attorney General. Senator Walsh had uncovered the Teapot Dome Scandal. Senator Walsh died on a train en route to DC. Then, President Roosevelt appointed Homer Cummings, from Connecticut, as Attorney General.

Cummings devised the scheme to pack the Supreme Court and, essentially, created the FBI. He was also a gun control advocate who proposed circumventing the Second Amendment by using the federal government’s taxing power to regulate the ownership and possession of firearms, especially handguns.

Originally, the 1934 bill required all handguns to be registered and licensed by the federal government. Firearms enthusiasts rebelled against the idea. The NRA agreed to a compromise: allow sawed-off shotguns, machine guns, and silencers to be banned by extortionist taxes, but remove handguns from the bill.

[marktwain]

Texas, in removing the state ban, helps to move the needle toward removing short barreled firearms from the NFA.

[faithhopecharity]

not only is ATeff totally unconstitutional and dangerous to our republican (lower case R) form of governance,
it has such STUPID, inane, dumb, crazy, insane laws and regulations

this being one of them

I say shut it down and offer the employees equal or better jobs that are actually constitutional and useful (and rational).... doing other work.

[suthener]

When you can legally buy an AR/AK pistol and a Mossberg Shockwave, all the short barreled laws are complete nonsense.

[marktwain]

Yes. Exactly. Consider the Keltec KS7.