BROOKS CRENSHAW: How Alcohol Prohibition Makes Millions Of Felons 90 Years Later

In my morning scroll, I recently encountered a flow chart on social media that laid out, quite accurately as it turns out, a process approximating the following: 

Public thinks X is scary > Authorities ban X to make public feel safe > No legal way to obtain X > Value of X increases > Black Market forms > Organized Crime gains new source of income > Organized crime grows > Frequency of violent crime increases > Law enforcement uses harsher tactics > Criminals become more violent > Frequency of violent crime increases > Law enforcement uses harsher tactics > Criminals become more violent > etc. as the resulting triangular loop continues ad infinitum. 

To truly understand and address today’s problems, we need to look back and dissect the decisions of our past to see how we got here. In addressing the American healthcare system, for example, one must consider that the primary reason we get our healthcare through our employer in a less-than-free-market system. It is an artifact of FDR’s salary caps and price controls under the threat of which, in order to recruit top talent, employers offered healthcare benefits in addition to the capped salary. Only by grasping the root causes can we address the issues at hand, rather than merely dealing with their surface symptoms. But your politicians and your media are superficial because they think you are too.

I have seen the flow chart dynamic play out in markets and in law over the years of my observance. But, in addition to this troublesome pattern, a pattern of patterns emerges with increasingly worrisome results. There is a consequence to growing the federal code every year without removing any existing or outdated law. The more rules made, the less important the rules become, all while the force of state increases. This means a manufacturing through federal fiat of more criminals every year who would, but for the added legislation, otherwise remain law-abiding taxpayers and functional members of society.

For an example of the ripple effect from bad policy that persists in the previous manner, we can examine the 18th Amendment. Alcohol prohibition is a perfect example of how we got it wrong, but thankfully and ultimately got it right. Though Congress and the states chose the better course with the 21st Amendment, which repealed its burdensome predecessor, the correction did not clean up all the baggage that came with the former bad policy. For, just as the opening flow chart illustrated, organized crime grew and police tried to crack down, which led to an arms race of sorts. What was to be done?

Enter the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934, which made certain firearms and accessories illegal for anyone who failed to pay a prohibitive tax and go through an onerous process. This law is currently being used by the Biden administration’s ATF to make felons overnight of anywhere from between 10 and 40 million Americans with a mandatory penalty of 10 years in federal prison. The NFA’s verbiage hasn’t changed to make this legal impact. The unelected lawyers at ATF simply published an opinion paper and a new form with a criteria points system that, according to them, changed the law overnight.

Since 2012, the ATF has stated that the pistol brace — a small piece of plastic that has no impact on the function of the weapon, but merely provides an enhancement of ergonomic comfort — was in fact a legal accessory. How many of the 10-40 million people who bought one know they are or will soon become felons facing a mandatory 10-year sentence? There is currently a 5th Circuit injunction preventing enforcement of this new extra-legislative edict, as the Supreme Court will ultimately weigh in. But if the new regulation stands, millions of felons will be created overnight from a bureaucratic rejiggering of a nearly 100-year-old statute enacted directly to combat the consequences of the bad federal policy of alcohol prohibition.

There is no denying that the 18th Amendment led directly to the National Firearms Act. Government seized freedom, then used the predictable byproduct of that seizure to justify the seizing of more power by punishing the innocent for the sins of the guilty; the guilty who only entered into the unlawful activity through the initial act of government overreach creating the pent-up demand.

Having served in the military, I can tell you that I, along with every other military recruit before or since, have experienced being punished for the sins of others. It’s a common theme throughout basic training. This concept is demonstrated artfully in movies like “Full Metal Jacket,” in which all the recruits undergo punitive physical exercise while Private Pyle eats his jelly-filled contraband. There are only two reasons to punish the innocent for the guilt of others:

1. To break down the individual; in boot camp it is required to break down a recruit and disabuse him of much of his prior way of life so that he can be built back up into what the military wants him to be.
2.  To create division among individuals and the incentive to police one another, potentially to stay in the good graces of authority and for possible reward. 

The former degrades individual character, which facilitates the latter, which precipitates a descending march through East Berlin and into the mass grave. 

We should turn around.