My Stuff: How did we ever survive . . . ?

How did we ever survive with such death machines available to the general public through the mail, with the only paperwork involved being the sales slip?

Why were there no rivers of blood and gore flowing through the streets on a daily basis?

Up until 1934, subguns could be purchased without any mandatory paperwork from any level of government – no required background checks, no mandatory fingerprinting or photographs, no ∅200 transfer tax, no requirement that you get your police chief or sheriff to sign off on your purchase.

In fact, the STEN gun advertised in the picture was made AFTER the National Firearms Act of 1934 had been passed and signed into "law" – the STEN was first developed in 1941, as World War II was getting started. You see, the Brits had dumped truckloads of military-pattern rifles and subguns into the North Sea after WWI, rather than let their private citizens have them. The fact that quite a few weapons had to be left behind during the Dunkirk evacuation compounded the matter.

In this case, Cadmus Industries' advert uses the phrases "airdropped to Maquis" and "used in ill-fated Rommel HQ raid."

And after the War, plenty of American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines brought weapons home in their duffel bags – not only war prizes such as specimens of the MG 42, FG 42, MG 34, Luger, MP 40, StG 44, Nambu pistol, etc., but they also brought home American and Allied weapons such as BREN guns, M1 rifles, M1 carbines and Browning Automatic rifles. Quite a few of those returning service members didn't bother to fill out any NFA paperwork, and quite properly so – the federal rules requiring such paperwork are quasi-Constitutional at best in the letter of the Constitution, the Declaration and the Bull of Rights. Where the spirit of the Founding Documents is concerned, the NFA-1934 is flat-out ANTI–Constitutional.

Yet there didn't seem to be many if any "active shooter" type of spree killers, of the kinds we saw at Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, Sandy Hook Elementary, Columbine High School, etc. Never mind that all of those locations had been legislatively designated as "gun free zones" since 1990 (thank you, (REPUBLICAN) George H. W. Bush!) where no one but law-enforcement personnel are permitted to carry weapons.