Hughes Amendment

David Codrea has a GRE article on the Hughes Amendment to the FOPA of 1986.  In it, he links to a YouTube video of the Congressional session where the vote was taken.  A transcript is available, but it's unknown if it's official.

My commentary on the War on Guns blog post:

My reading of Heller's reply: He says that many have discussed the possibility of repealing the Hughes amendment, and that he will vote to protect the Second Amendment, which implies that he would support legislation to strike down the machinegun ban. However, Heller doesn't say he will push such a bill himself. It's interesting that he mentions the amendment was passed under questionable circumstances, however.

With regard to the YouTube video on the vote, my interpretation is that the 6:25 recorded vote is on "the motion for the committee to rise", which I believe is to close discussion on amendments. This fails, and Hughes asks for five minutes to explain the bill. Then, despite the motion failing, Rangel calls for a vote on the Hughes amendment at 8:16. Only a voice vote is recorded. In the background you can hear someone telling Hughes, "let it go, let it go, let it go, you got it!" Obviously not even Hughes realized what the hell was going on. At 8:43 someone asks for the ayes and nays, i.e. for a recorded vote, and Rangel just smiles at him and proceeds. Subsequently, there's a vote on the Volkmer substitute as amended: the voice vote fails at 9:10, but the recorded vote passes at 9:45.

A transcript of the session (unknown if it's considered official) can be found here:
http://www.iwilldefendtheconstitution.com/Congressional_Transcript.pdf
Based on the transcript, some footage was omitted, such as the diatribe by Weiss after the recorded vote on the motion to rise but before the vote on the Hughes amendment.

::G

It's crazy that it took 25 years for the video footage to come to light.