Actually, they may be considered by ATF readily convertible since they lack the extra metal that makes putting a happy switch in more difficult.

If only there were a boilerplate for filing a case against 922(o) that anyone could use, saving the prohibitive cost of a lawyer. Get enough cases going, and some judges will agree, driving the case to SCOTUS. A footnote in _Heller_ noted that full-auto could not be banned outright without destroying the 2ndA.

If we nutted up and put lawmaker's feet to the fire and got them to look objectively at the full-auto issue could get us some progress.

I mean guns that are less powerful, less accurate and require more reloading are MORE dangerous why?

I dimly recall something about how the Hughes amendment might be a dagger into the heart of the whole '34 act since it's nominally about collecting taxes and the amendment is a refusal to collect said taxes.

It is not illegal to own a machinegun (in most states), it is illegal to own one without paying the tax. That's '34. '86 is saying that they are not going to accept that tax.

There's grounds there, but nobody with deep pockets has assaulted the mountain.

Sadly, I don't see this changing anytime soon.

Personally, I believe that the 2A, as it was origonally intended, was ment to say "if the military has it, people can have it". Granted, the framers couldn't have possibly anticipated nukes, but the basic idea is still sound (after all, who could possibly afford a nuke?).

Of course with ownership of such a device comes responsability for said device, so shooting up a playground with your super-bullet-sprayer 3000 should land you in jail and/or the chair in the corner (the one with the wires and funny hat). The sad reality is that our government doesn't trust the people with that responsability and probably never will.

s

Sadly, Viking, I must disagree. They do trust us. They trust us to have better moral compasses than do they. They trust us to at some point stop accepting abuse. They trust us to believe in the founding documents.

Therefore they cannot abide the thought of us having the tools to set aright what they put aplunder. (not a typo)

They trust us too much to chance it.

It has more to do with their fear that we WILL be responsible in the use of such weapons. They do not fear our irresponsibility, but rather our responsibility.

Stuart:

18th century English distinguished between "arms" (weapons and equipment of the individual soldier) and "pieces of ordnance" (cannons and other support weapons).

Crew served or non-man-portable weapons fall SQUARELY within the definition of "pieces of ordnance", and would not be considered "arms".

Having said that, an M4 carbine or M16 rifle (complete with happy switch) falls squarely within the definition of "arms".

straightarrow: Gee, nice symantic argument. Whether they don't trust us to be good little boys or they trust us to NOT be good little boys is pretty much the SAME DAMN THING!

Rick R.: Thank you for the education, I have never looked at it that way.

Hmm... I guess that would kill the dream of owning most machine guns (real ones, not sub-machine guns like the UZI or MAC). As I remember it, although it can be handled by a single soldier (and often is), the M60 is considered to be crew served. Even the M249 SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon) might be considered to be crew served since a fireteam has a machine gunner (who actually fires the thing) and an assistant machine gunner (who mostly humps extra ammo). Maybe I'm reading it too closely.

All in all, I still think an American SHOULD be allowed to have whatever they want (as long as they can afford it) regardless.

s

Devil's Advocate:

This is just the lower, serialized and stamped in a way that makes it a 'machine gun'. Doesn't matter if you put a bolt action 50 BMG upper on it, it's considered a machine gun.

As long you are going to have a class of item with special laws that apply to it called a "firearm", then some piece of that item is going to have to be the actual, irreducible firearm; you can't just magically make it "not a firearm" by taking it apart.

(The law says, for instance, that a felon can't own a firearm. That law would be pointless if he could own a "lower receiver" and an "upper receiver", or a "frame" and a "slide". There has to be one item which retains an essential quality of "firearms-ness" that you can forbid him from owning.)

Again, all this has nothing to do with how I feel about Federal gun laws (I don't think there should be any; I should be able to mail order a Ma Deuce right now,) but is merely playing Devil's Advocate.

Stuart,

Not necessarily. CONGRESS has not distinguished between "arms" and "pieces of ordnance" in the NFA.

If 922(o) is dumped for Constitutional reasons, then it will likely be dumped in it's entirity. . . meaning new M60s would again be legal for civilian transfer.

Just because something isn't a specifically enumerated and protected
right doesn't mean it is automatically prohibited conduct. Just because Congress CAN ban something, doesn't mean they MUST ban it.

Given the history of teh NFA, if 922(o) was ruled unconstitutional tomorrow, and Congresscritters tried to reinstitute it in regards to machineguns that aren't "arms", there's a clear field to challenge them in the public perception:

1. Under the NFA, legally owned machineguns have not been a problem. Period. TWO incidents -- one of which involved a police officer as the criminal.

2. "The receiver is the gun". Something like a Shrike upper receiver would STILL be classed as an "arm", as teh federal definition of a machinegun hinges on the RECEIVER (or a combination of conversion parts that functionally turn a non-machinegun receiver into a machinegun).

3. Under the NFA, legally possessed Destructive Devices have been a non-issue.

4. At no time since the NFA was passd was civilian ownership of guns as "dangerous" as a 16" Coast Artillery rifle (not that I'm aware of ANY that have ever been in the NFA Registry {chuckle}). A belt fed M60 is quite tame in comparison.

I personally see the entire NFA tax structure to be Constitutionally suspect, as it is a DIRECT tax on the exercise of a specifically enumerated right that declares "shall not be infringed". The regsitration side of the NFA may be ruled permissable, under strict scrutiny (NO right is absolute -- if the 2nd Amendment was immune to ANY regulation, we would have to allow felony prisoners to keep and carry loaded machineguns jail! {grin} ), but the "make" and "register" taxes are actually more suspect than a poll tax would be!

Robb,

The proper analogy would be, "I have a billet of steel, and hunk of wood. Doesn't mean I have a Kalshnikov."

Just as teh eggs, milk, flour, sugar, and butter need to be "machined" into a cake, the billet of steel and hunk of wood need to be "baked" into a rifle.

Claiming that the "receiver" is the irreduciable part of the gun is like having a fully baked cake, a box of candles, a tub of frosting, and saying, "I have a birthday cake" -- even though it's not fully assembled.

I believe that the ATF is out of control on it's interpretation of "readily restored" in regards to gun receivers, and overly aggressive on it's interpretation of "silencer parts".

However, holding them to a standard that a fully machined machinegun receiver IS the "machinegun" is a LOT better than allowing them to claim that a vague collection of parts MAY or MAY NOT be a "machinegun" -- which is EXACTLY the problem with the silencer regs, AND is what you are unwittingly proposing they do for gun receivers!

I'd much rather have them define ONE part on a gun and say, "For legal pruposes, THIS is the regulated part that defines the gun, everything else is just a 'part' that is unregulated."

Of course, I'd also like to see a definition of "readily restored" that is not only CONSISTANT ("X amount of time, with Y equipment, and Z skill set"), but doesn;t result in absurdities like claiming an undrilled, uncut chuck of galvanized fence post is a "machinegun" is possessed along with a piece of paper.

ATF has claimed that eight hours in a machineshop, by a qualified gunmaker, qualifies something as "readily restored".

hell, I can go cut up the fence posts for my backyard and Dremel up a functional SMG receiver in well under an hour. . . You can take a fully legal semiauto Kalashnikov rifle and "make" a machinegun out of it MUST faster than that (while many semiauto Klatch receivers don;t have the full auto rails installed, they aren't prohibited -- ultimately, what makes a Klatch a machinegun in the eys of ATF is the hole for the autosear. If you can stick a stock AK full auto trigger group in it, it's a "machinegun receiver". That's one not extremely precise hole in two 1mm pieces of sheet steel.)

Of course, in a sane and logical world, "readily restored" would mean a readily REVERSEABLE condition. If you have to cut something off or weld something on to hide the fact that you illegally made a machinegun, it shouldn't be "readily convertable" -- they can SEE whether or not you had converted it.

Ain't a whole lot of gangsters sho are going to reweld the autosear hole after every drive by, only to drill it back out for teh next one. Besides, if they DO do that, the gun will have a dramatically short lifespan. . .

"Constructive possession" (with the POSSIBLE exception of SBRs or SBSs. . . and I think THEIR regulation under NFA is stupid) should not even be a factor.

Either you made a machinegun, or you did not.

BUT, if you DO have a machinegun receiver fully made, it's still a machinegun receiver, even if the rest of the unregulated parts are missing.

(Note that ATF LOST the "once a machinegun, always a machinegun" on some Vollmer converted HKs. The court ruled that once the HKs were welded back into teh same configuration as legal semiautos, they weren't "machineguns" anymore. ATF did NOT keep appealing, because they DID NOT want a national precedent.)

Rob,

To continue the "devil's advocate" thing, which part of a gun would you say that an inmate can't possess? ;)

Well, I for one am glad they chose "receiver" (and in the case of the AR15/M16 family, the lower receiver) as the defined gun.

If they chose "barrels", then ANY barrel -- including ones for muzzleloaders -- are potential "machineguns".

Additionally, the barrel rarely has much to do with the mechanical rate of fire -- the receiver has more so -- a 20" AR15 barrel is also a 20" M16 barrel; a Saiga barrel is also a Kalashnikov barrel; many machinepistols use the same barrels as their service pistol counterparts.

Likewise, I've had to (or chosen to, in cases where it was an upgrade) replace barrels before. I have never had a receiver break on me yet. So counting the receiver as the "Platonic ideal" of the gun works better in a society where guns are generally legal, but there is SOME control over guns. Plus, the receiver is the part mostly likely to be retained, even as the gun gets depot level rearsenalling. This is why countries that generally restoirct (or prohibit) civilian ownership of guns ALSO generally serialize their receivers, whether or not they serialize the other parts.

Now, if you are talking about a society where the intent is to keep guns away from civilians ENTIRELY, making the barrel the defining componant makes sense -- barrels are a lot tougher to make than recievers for SMGs, Kalashnikovs, ARs, Browning MGs, etc. While some receiver designs (the Garand comes to mind) may be more difficult to make outside a gun factory than a simple barrel would be, restricting barrels is a surerer way of stamping out illegal gun production than regulating receivers.

Hell, I followed a post thread by a guy who did an semiauto FAL receiver with hacksaw, files, and a hand held electric drill. I don't think he even had a Dremel. . . making a perfectly good Kalashnikov receiver from a flat piece of sheet steel and SCREWS (no welding required) is easily do-able. You can even make a sheet metal AR15 receiver (requires a little welding) with a little sweat (both mental and literal).

On the other hand, there ain't no such thing as an "easy home rifle barrel".

To answer Tam's question, I would tell an inmate that ALL gun parts are contraband, but ESPECIALLY barrels and receivers. Any barrel can be readily made into a muzzleloader barrel. . .

Won't keep weapons out of the hands of inmates, but it will make it easier to minimize the numbers involved.

There's a philosophical argument (whose proper name I forget; I think of it as the "Grandfather's Axe" problem after a remark in The Fifth Elephant - The Ship of Theseus?) in defining what constitutes the "essense" of an object with replicable and replaceable parts.

I'm with Tam here (and just as much of a Devil's Advocate) - *if* we have to pick *something* to be the Platonic Firearm, the part that *is* the soul of the gun, the receiver may as well be it. Everything else is variable, optional, or impractical to serialize. The firing pin, for example, is pretty much *the* required piece of a centerfire firearm, but it's a consumable part.