Holy ****.

Wasnt machine guns the reason they went into Waco? Ruby Ridge?

All in favor of ignoring this to avoid embarrassment say aye. All opposed, no. In the opinion of the Chair, the ayes have it and media silence is agreed to.

Download the flv just in case it is "removed by the author".

Oh ****!!! I can believe it, I just reaqlly don't want to, because then it is already at the full Mad Max scenario where the government is the raging lunatics that is trying to kill everyone.

This has been discussed before. Basically, Jefferson's Manual (the set of rules the House operates under) isn't law, so technically no law was broken here, just internal House rules. The *law* is that once a bill is voted on and passed, it's law no matter what's in it or how it was added.

And the screencap you show with "297 NAY" is IIRC the vote to "stand" which means stop debating about the amendment. The part against the rules is where Rangel declares it passed by voice vote and ignores calls for a tally. But this is the kind of power the Speaker holds to do underhanded but not technically illegal crap.

One can undo 922(o) the same way, just no one has done it yet.

"The making of laws like the making of sausages, is not a pretty sight." --Bismarck

Quote:

The *law* is that once a bill is voted on and passed, it's law no matter what's in it or how it was added.

Except the Amendment wasn't in there as the vote failed. Yes, once passed it's passed, but first it has to be passed.

So it appears that when the bill was engrossed following the vote the Amendment that failed was included. The key there is that the full House never voted on the bill with the Amendment.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/L?....(Amendments_For_H.R.4332)&./temp/~bd5LYs]

Here's is shortened version of URL above (the URL has brackets and I don't know how to escape them in TickerMarkup):
http://goo.gl/uFmpb



According to this it [i.e. the Hughes Amendment banning machine guns] passed 'Status: Amendment Passed in Committee of the Whole by Voice Vote.' No mention of the Recorded Vote. Very odd.

Why didn't opponents of the ban make a bigger deal of this in 1986?

At 8:30 is the actual voice vote to include the Hughes Amendment, and Charlie deems it passed by voice vote. I'm not aware if it was engrossed or not, I presume it was.

ed: are you saying that Hughes was a substitute for Volker's, and Volker's never passed but the act to make Hughes's a sub for Volker's did?

ed2: In any case, if it was engrossed, and it was voted on, it's law. I don't think it even matters if the Congressional page that puts it in the hopper substitutes a bill saying that you can only wear blue on alternate Tuesdays. If it's pulled from the hopper, read, and wins a majority, it's law.

ed3: NRA also said to Reagan "sign FOPA, and we'll get the MG clause removed by the Supreme Court" so Ronnie signed and we're stuck.

There were no opponents. The Republicans and NRA agreed to sell out MG shooters in exchange for the firearm owners' protection act, which is how we can now buy ammo interstate as individuals.

The reason it wasn't opposed was the lobby of people WITH said machine guns at the time. They stood to make a killing (and still do) off the increasingly shorter supply. Neat, huh?

Quote:

At 8:30 is the actual voice vote to include the Hughes Amendment, and Charlie deems it passed by voice vote. I'm not aware if it was engrossed or not, I presume it was.

Listen again more carefully - Rangel deems it passed by voice and then after a recorded vote is demanded he calls one (as he's required to do under parliamentary procedure.)

There's a discontinuity in the recording at that point. If the recorded vote presented (which doesn't have an amendment number on the screen) is for the Hughes amendment, then it went down on a RECORDED vote.

I had known of the voice vote which Rangel deemed "passed" even though the nays were louder for a long time. What I DIDN'T know was that it APPEARS a recorded vote was called on the question after he deemed it passed AND IT FAILED.

That's what the video APPEARS to present. If that's what actually happened, then that Amendment was NOT engrossed into the bill, and someone tampered with it AFTER the House Vote sent it up to the President for signature.

...but why is this just being brought up now? You would think that if the legislators were against this bill, and there were manny of them, they would do something about it.

I know coke was a huge problem back then, but are these guys all on crack?

Any chance it got included in the final bill, because the Senate did vote for it and when the bill was reconciled it was included?

Ninj, I thick they JUST found the video is why it's coming back up now...

No1Ninja, apparently this guy at Calguns.net dug up the video recently:

http://www.calguns.net/calgunforum/showt....

The guy is saying that the CSPAN videos of the day were destroyed, but he found a copy in the Library of Congress...

Could there have been a second vote? TARP failed in the house before it passed.

It took me about twenty views of that mess to begin to grasp what was going on. From what I can gather, at 08:20 in the embedded video is where the subterfuge really begins.

The vote at/very near 08:20 is supposed to be on approving the Hughes amendment to ban machine guns to the bill it was ultimately attached to. (Charlie has been calling voice votes wrong according to the subsequent electronic votes up unto this point, as well.)

The audio is spotty in places between 08:20 and 08:40.

At 08:40, Charlie starts speaking about another vote, whether or not to pass the whole mess "as amended", presumably with the Hughes machine gun ban as an amendment. At 08:42, a call is heard for "ayes and nays", which appears to be another phrasing for a request for a recorded, electronic vote on amending the original piece of legislation with the Hughes amendment to ban machine guns. THIS IS IGNORED BY CHARLIE. Charlie pauses, appears to smirk, and presses on with calling a vote on the legislative mess "as amended".

I wondered why Charlie would again try to shoot down the amended legislation, which the later Congressional records and history until now considered passed with the machine gun ban in place - until recalling that this legislation was in part or in whole the Firearm Owners Protection Act, which included further restrictions on government arms control efforts, to include the protection of mail-order ammunition. Charlie didn't appear to want this passed at any cost, but was stymied by a horde of voices he couldn't ignore insisting on recorded votes.

So, it appears the "poison pill" machine gun ban in the FOPA wasn't part of any sort of grand strategy, but merely deceit and clock-running.

All of this circus aside, remember that the very legal document that grants Congress the authority to do anything at all explicitly prohibits Congress and the rest of the fedgov from infringing on the possession and carrying arms, period.

i'm highly skeptical just because it took 25 years for it to surface and no other confirming first-hand account. occum's razor - the more probable explanation is that the tape was doctored.

Aliveh,

According to the calguns thread, above, by folks who dug this video out of fedgov archives, it is edited.

The clip is referred to as the "highlight reel".

A copy of the entire tape (since DVDs weren't around in 1986) is said to be in the possession of the requestors and scheduled for release soon.

Here is the ENTIRE video, as uploaded to Vimeo. The video posted on youtube is in fact a highlight reel.

http://vimeo.com/19173055

http://vimeo.com/19163920

http://vimeo.com/19179485

http://vimeo.com/19185561

You are saying that none of the voters checked the electronic vote? (do they have this ability?) I think this is why I am confused.

I want the original source footage in the format it's available, both for inspection and to produce an annotated copy. If I can get my hands on it, I'll do that.

It's not clear from the video whether there's a parlimentarian trick involved here (in which case like it or not, the amendment stands) or whether the amendment ACTUALLY WENT DOWN in which case it's void.

No1ninja,

No, it appears that the requests for a recorded vote on whether or not to use the machine gun ban (Hughes amendment) as an amendment were ignored, and a recorded vote was never taken on that specific matter. Further, it appears that every time Charlie called a voice vote and an associated recorded vote, he called it in favor of the wrong party every time.