More on pistol-gripped shotguns

So if you register your short rifled barrel pistol grip shotgun as a destructive device, and then later want to swap a smooth a short barrel in it's place, do you need to get a new tax stamp for an AOW?

Yeah, avoiding NFA tax consequences gets real difficult real fast when trying to get a useful pistol type firearm that shoots shotshells. Other than the Judge and a few higher priced outfits, most of the .410 pistols are junk.

What is needed is a good shotshell loading for the .500 S&W Magnum. A person can always try to load their own with factory brass, cardboard wads, and fooling around with the crimping. After all, there are lots of solid metal shotshells out there.

There are blackpowder options like the big muzzleloading howdah pistols that have been offered recently. But they aren't as cool as a shotshell gun.

Oh, and regarding that opinion letter: it is my somewhat informed understanding that a BATFE opinion letter is only good for the specific person to whom it was addressed, and the specific firearm it discussed. And, AND, the BATFE has the right, apparently, to reverse them at will. See, Akins Accelerator, History Of.

I am a long time reader and occasional poster to this site. I am aways amazed by the subject of the posts that draw the most comments. After reading this new post that continues the discussion of pistol gripped smooth bores, I went back and reviewed the original post. That post now has 25 comments. As this is a 2A legal blog I guess I should not be surprised but the National Firearms Act seems to be a great topic to draw a lot of comments. Maybe its the evolution of the NFA, as interpreted by the ATF, that keeps legal scholars dumbfounded. Strange rules and regulations, very very strange.

Shoe string being classified as Machine Guns.

Thompson Center court opinion only applying to one model gun.

Court opinion on vertical fore gripped ignored.
Opinion Letters reversed.

FFL newsletters ignored by field agents.

Glad the IRS will be enforcing the new Obama Health Care rules with 16000 new personnel and a bunch of new Remington 14 inch 12g shotguns.

PS. those NFA shotguns would require YOU to pay the $200 tax

I'll just keep writing the $200 checks and try and keep the ATF happy.

Chuck

Chuck:

Its even worse than that. The NFA gets really interesting when you go back and research the real reasons for its passage.

Of course, it is common knowledge that the original (and so far unchanged) $200 transfer/makings tax was intended to keep machine guns prohibitively expensive - for the common person. This was on the heels of the Bonus Marchers being driven out of D.C. by the United States Army and having well-armed civilians was a real concern to the lovers of the Status Quo. For the Corporations and Big Business Trusts (which were much more common back then), a $200 tax to arm their Pinkerton guards and such with machine guns was no big deal. The Rockefellers could easily afford it.

But, then, there is the requirement about CLEO sign-off. Except that the Big Business Corporations and Trusts were not required to get CLEO sign-off. You know, just in case the local sheriff was on the side of organized labor and not on the side of the Corporations and Big Business Trusts.

I've just touched on the tip of the iceberg about the NFA. Very interesting little statute. And new issues get raised all the time.

We now know, for example, that the right to keep and bear arms is, indeed, an individual right. Well then, how do you get away with taxing an individual right? Poll taxes and limiting the right to vote to tax-paying property owners was prohibited by the Supreme Court years ago. So what gives the Congress the power to tax the individual right that is firearms ownership? Many interesting, and difficult questions remain to be answered.

Interesting times. Interesting times, indeed.

Letalis Maximus:

Heller, threw machine guns under the bus. I can't blame Gura because he was doing what was best to win the case for his client. I hope McDonald treats the references to machine guns as dicta or simply ignores them all together. IMHO it would be hard to say that the 14.5 inch M4 or the 14 inch Remington shotguns just acquired by the IRS and more importantly the Dept. of Education are unusual AND dangerous. So maybe we have a starting place to discuss the repeal of the NFA or at least the 86 Hughes amendment. Just wishful thinking I know.

Chuck

The original "dangerous and usual weapons" language was in regards to carrying weapons openly in medieval England. It was not what we would today understand as a gun control ordinance (or other weapon categorization law).

The modern analogue would be the carry statutes that forbid "going armed to the terror of the public." The idea is that if someone walks around with an ordinary weapon, it won't cause a public panic. If that same person walks around with a rocket launcher or flamethrower in public, it will cause public panic in complete disproportion to any possible self defense purpose.

In such a context, it's pretty clear that
a) owning dangerous and unusual weapons was clearly not prohibited by such statutes. Carrying them in public in a manner that would cause alarm in reasonable passers-by was prohibited. It was implicitly understood by the drafters of such statutes that private ownership of such weapons was widespread and beyond the power of the king to prevent.
b) the appearance of the weapon and the context in which it is carried are both important. If a particular semiautomatic weapon is protected under a particular circumstance, the select-fire version of that same weapon must also be protected, as there is no way to tell the difference without firing them or disassembling them.

Unless you have an inadvertent misprint, there is a problem. The overwhelming majority of shotguns, absent a few highly specialized guns intended only for use with slug rather than shot ammunition, are smoothbores. Therefore regardless of whether they are equipped with only a pistol grip or a complete shoulder stock, they would not fit the definition you've attributed to the BATFE. In other words, a long gun with a rifled barrel is, practically and technically considered a rifle, not a shotgun.

There are federal laws that prevent a rifle from having less than a 16" barrel, but some manufacturers do produce and sell unwieldy "pistols" based on rifle receivers absent a shoulder stock and with very short barrels. Such weapons tend to be very, very loud and have truly ferocious muzzle blast from the unburned powder of their rifle cartridges.

Mike:

Yes, but in 1934 (when the NFA was passed), rifle caliber pistols did not exist. When the NFA was being considered by the Congress, the .357 Magnum was also being developed by Elmer Keith and Smith & Wesson. At the time, believe it or not the most powerful handgun in the world was still...the cap and ball 1847 Walker Colt.

In many ways, the NFA is obsolete.

"But they neglected to remove the "any other weapon" provision."

My recollection of the history is that the manufacturers of the firearms in the new AOW category raised a hue and cry over the transfer tax (a full $200, like everything else, IIRC), resulting in the first amendment of the NFA in ... 1936, I believe, finding that such firearms had "legitimate uses" and adjusting the transfer tax down to $1. Too little, too late, and the market was already effectively dead, with no production AOWs being made again until the 1970s.

The 45 long colt and similar cartridges were available in lever guns as early as the 19th century.

And of course the NFA was NEVER Constitutional. The 2nd amendment is latter law while the power to tax and the commerce clauses are prior law. Standard understanding is that latter law supercedes prior conflicting law. Freaking duh! Even the preamble to the Bill of Rights provides evidence that Congress cannot place a restriction on Arms. AND if this is not enough, the Fifth Amendment places the requirement that the tax (private property) taken results in just compensation for the person from whom the tax is taken. And there are more issues with the punishment portions which also are unConstitutional. Read your Constitution. Congress has no punishment power outside the 5-6 granted authorities to punish and esp. not through the "necessary and proper" clause which if interpreted the way SOME people read, makes several power grants unnecessary. Any reading of one clause that makes any other contemporary clause of the Constitution unnecessary is a wrong understanding.

Jim W:

The .45 Colt was developed as a handgun cartridge.

Lovely ... a letter that flies in the face of past actions.

Why am I not surprised.

I saw a factory custom Mossberg with a rifled 10" barrel sell at Hanks Hardware in Cornelius Oregon as a 12 gauge pistol. This was about 10 years ago.

I suppose the owner is now unknowingly carrying an unregistered DD around?

Sorry, misread that as pistol caliber rifles, not rifle caliber pistols.

For rifle caliber pistols, there is always the obrez, which has presumably been around for as long as the mosin nagant.

Mr. Hardy, you might appreciate this.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4024/4443887659_e28d6b7771_b.jpg