Mississippi Lawyer Accepting Crowd Funding Donations to Fight NFA
You may remember a while back when we shared some information about how the BATFE may have “accidentally” opened the machine gun registry.
This Prince Law Blog post provides most of the background, but the gist is this: Since 1986, thanks to the Hughes Amendment to the Firearm Owners Protection Act, “persons” have been disallowed from making new machine guns (922(o) reads, in part: “it shall be unlawful for any person to transfer or possess a machinegun [except] a machinegun that was lawfully possessed before the date this subsection takes effect“). In response to a request for clarification about a NICS check question, an ATF official noted that “Unlike individuals, corporations, partnerships, and associations; unincorporated trusts do not fall within the definition of “person” in the GCA.”
This caused Prince to reach the conclusion that “[P]ursuant to 26 U.S.C. 5812 and 5822, an unincorporated trust may lawfully transfer and make machineguns, as it is not a “person” for purposes of the GCA and Section 922 only applies to “persons” as defined by the GCA“. Word spread and some Form 1s were submitted on trusts to make new machine guns. For better or worse, the BATFE approved a number of them and, rumor has it, some of those approvals were acted on and new machine guns were made. And here we are today… with new Form 1s being categorically rejected, approved Form 1s (and, potentially, new machine guns) out in the wild with the BATFE saying “Oops! Our bad, can you send those back and not make machine guns with them?”
Now, Stephen D. Stamboulieh of Stamboulieh Law, PLLC has taken up the banner and is preparing to take the case(s) to court. Stamboulieh is seeking crowd funding donations through his GoFundMe effort titled Help Overturn 18 USC 922(o) & NFA. The effort has already raised nearly $29k of the $50k goal.
From the GoFundMe page: Continue reading
Pennsylvania Lawyer Claims ATF Determination Allows for New Machine Guns
Pennsylvania attorney Joshua Prince, Esq. is making a bold claim in his blog entry Did ATF’s Determination on NICS Checks Open the Door for Manufacture of New Machineguns for Trusts? that may be music to NFA enthusiasts’ ears.
In his post, Prince points out that, although the NFA regulations include language to include trusts under their purview, the 1968 Gun Control Act (GCA), codified in Title 18 of the United States Code, includes no such language. A 2013 inquiry by Dakota Silencer received an ATF response reading: “Unlike individuals, corporations, partnerships, and associations; unincorporated trusts do not fall within the definition of ‘person’ in the GCA.” As many already know, transfer by a person of a machine gun that was not registered before May 19, 1986 is forbidden by the Hughes Amendment to the Firearms Owners Protection ACT FOPA, which added subsection 922(0) to the law.
Prince’s conclusion is that:
[P]ursuant to 26 U.S.C. 5812 and 5822, an unincorporated trust may lawfully transfer and make machineguns, as it is not a “person” for purposes of the GCA and Section 922 only applies to “persons” as defined by the GCA.
This conclusion is Continue reading
BATFE to Accept Comments on Armor Piercing Ammo Through End of Year
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has posted a notification on their website soliciting comments regarding requests to exempt certain projectiles from regulation as “armor piercing ammunition.”
The posting states that ATF is “seeking public comments on specific projectiles or projectile cores which may be used in a handgun and which are constructed entirely from one or a combination of tungsten, alloys, steel, iron, brass, bronze, beryllium, copper, or depleted uranium, and whether these projectiles or projectile cores pose a threat to public safety and law enforcement, or are, ‘primarily intended to be used for sporting purposes” and therefore may be exempted from classification as “armor piercing ammunition.’” Continue reading
SWR, SilencerCo, Others Pull Ads from Recoil Magazine Over Comments
The latest “sporting purpose” comments over tactical weapons have sparked renewed new backlash against one firearms publication.
SWR/SilencerCo, in a recent blog posting, announced that they are pulling their ads from Recoil Magazine, stating that the have written to the editor to request that they “discontinue all scheduled advertising for both Silencerco and SWR products.”
The backlash comes after editorial comments by Recoil magazine that SWR/SilencerCo describes as “concerning the illegitimacy of a certain firearm ( and by extension, an entire class of firearms).” The text in question is as follows: Continue reading
