I am told that former Congressman Harold Volkmer (D-MO) died last night. He was primarily responsible for pushing the Firearms Owner’s Protection Act (FOPA) through the House back in the mid-1980s. I once had the pleasure of once sharing a table with Congressman Volkmer at an NRA lunch event. He was truly one of the giants of the movement to preserve the Second Amendment.
UPDATE: Dave Hardy has more information.
UPDATE: Obituary appears here:
Harold was busy literally in his last days reviewing a legal case for the NRA’s Civil Rights Defense Fund. Known to all simply as Harold, he was touched tremendously by the hundreds of greetings that came to him recently on his 80th birthday.
We have truly lost one of the great ones of this movement.
Dave Hardy has the address of Congressman Volkmer’s widow if anyone wants to send a card.
He was 80. I say making it to 80 is very good news, and that dying in your old age is very happy news.
The one problem with that act is the Hughes Amendment. Banning private ownership of full autos made after May 16th 1986. It’s the one reason I don’t love Reagan that much.
It’s arguable it was worth the trade. For one there wasn’t really any time to kill the bill. Hughes got that added at the last minute. For two if we had killed it, and held out for machine guns, we could have lost it all.
I think we came closer to losing it all than a lot of people realized.
It’s not Volkmer’s fault his bill was crapped on by a commie.
“I think we came closer to losing it all than a lot of people realized.”
People don’t know how close we came to losing machineguns totally in 1968, either. It would all make for a hell of a history book, though with so many of the participants dying the time to do it may have already passed.