National Slamfire Capable Shotgun Trigger action and the law.

[arakboss]

The Feds have said that a trigger which will continue to fire with one pull of the trigger is bad juju. It doesn't discuss any other action that is required for that type of trigger to be a no-no.

For example if you had a full auto trigger set up in an AR15 but had a bob sled permanently installed in the magwell would the trigger then be gtg?

In a slamfire capable shotgun, only a single pull is required to fire multiple rounds but another action is required (pumping to reload). Are the slamfire triggers still legal? Are any shotgun makers still making shotguns capable of slamfire operation.

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[Andy54Hawken]

If a so called "slam-fire" shotgun is now illegal....
That would make millions of vintage shotguns illegal.
Not to forget to mention more than a few vintage pump action .22LR rifles.

If I owned such a thing...
I wouldn't over worry 'bout getting caught over it.
Since as I said there are millions of them out there.
With that said...I wouldn't do anything stupid in order to attract attention to myself or the fact that I owned one either.

All which is a shame , since Winchester model's 97 and 12's , Ithaca 37's and a host of others...are well made shotguns still capable of doing fine work for what they were designed for.
And are good looking guns to boot.
Andy

 

[arakboss]

If a so called "slam-fire" shotgun is now illegal....
That would make millions of vintage shotguns illegal.
Not to forget to mention more than a few vintage pump action .22LR rifles.

If I owned such a thing...
I wouldn't over worry 'bout getting caught over it.
Since as I said there are millions of them out there.
With that said...I wouldn't do anything stupid in order to attract attention to myself or the fact that I owned one either.

All which is a shame , since Winchester model's 97 and 12's , Ithaca 37's and a host of others...are well made shotguns still capable of doing fine work for what they were designed for.
And are good looking guns to boot.
Andy

I agree. The shotgun I am chasing now is a store branded model of the Savage 520 type takedown models. It has a long barrel with full choke. I want a shorter cylinder barrel like the trench/riot guns had. I might have to put on my Bubba hat and break out the hacksaw.

 

[Andy54Hawken]

I agree. The shotgun I am chasing now is a store branded model of the Savage 520 type takedown models. It has a long barrel with full choke. I want a shorter cylinder barrel like the trench/riot guns had. I might have to put on my Bubba hat and break out the hacksaw.

A pipe cutter works well for this too.
Andy

 

[Stomper]

I agree. The shotgun I am chasing now is a store branded model of the Savage 520 type takedown models. It has a long barrel with full choke. I want a shorter cylinder barrel like the trench/riot guns had. I might have to put on my Bubba hat and break out the hacksaw.

A pipe cutter works well for this too.
Andy

No, no, NO!


Use a cutting torch, you'll see!








OK, don't do that.

 

[lucusloc]

I don't think this would be the case as the "trigger" is typically defined as the thing you actuate to fire the gun, not what we would consider the "actual" trigger. For example if you hook up a crank trigger system and then hook up a drill to that, the trigger on the drill becomes the "trigger actuator" for the firearm and you have a machine gun despite the fact that the "trigger" on the actual gun is being actuated repeatedly.

The way the ATF seems to define this in your example the pump would become the trigger for the purposes of slam-fire, which you are actuating for every single shot.

Now I am not a lawyer but I do know that what you would consider the trigger and what the ATF considers the trigger are not always the same thing.

 

[CountryGent]

What @lucusloc described is how I've understood this to be as well.

 

[User 1234]

At least under federal law, a slam fire pump action shotgun is not a machine gun. 26 U.S.C. 5845(b).

https://www.atf.gov/file/83561/download

 

[lucusloc]

At least under federal law, a slam fire pump action shotgun is not a machine gun. 26 U.S.C. 5845(b).

https://www.atf.gov/file/83561/download

View attachment 1816976

Yep, hand cranks are not machine guns because they only fire while you are proactively actuating the crank. As soon as you stop moving the crank the gun stops firing. Electric cranks, on the other hand, are machine guns because they keep operating as long as you passively hold the button/trigger/switch in the "on" position.

I always wondered about hand cranks where the handle was heavy enough to keep the gun firing for half the rotation on the down stroke. I strongly suspect that this would be considered "burst fire" and it would be a machine gun, as you could lift the weighted handle then drop it and get however many shots are in half a rotation "automatically."

As with most gun laws the actual technicalities get really wonky as non-standard devices stretch the legal definitions in the laws to and beyond their breaking points. It does not matter if it is trigger mechanisms, not-SBR "rifle style" "pistols" or anything else where people are innovating at the edge of the legal definitions. Our gun laws are FUBAR and need to be thrown out as completely unenforceable on a practical level.

 

[ma96782]

Aloha, Mark

 

[arakboss]

I don't think this would be the case as the "trigger" is typically defined as the thing you actuate to fire the gun, not what we would consider the "actual" trigger. For example if you hook up a crank trigger system and then hook up a drill to that, the trigger on the drill becomes the "trigger actuator" for the firearm and you have a machine gun despite the fact that the "trigger" on the actual gun is being actuated repeatedly.

The way the ATF seems to define this in your example the pump would become the trigger for the purposes of slam-fire, which you are actuating for every single shot.

Now I am not a lawyer but I do know that what you would consider the trigger and what the ATF considers the trigger are not always the same thing.

This seems logical but why did ATF go after forced reset triggers? If I had an FRT in a pump action AR15 it would not create any type of MG action. It appears sometimes they do go after triggers.

 

[User 1234]

This seems logical but why did ATF go after forced reset triggers? If I had an FRT in a pump action AR15 it would not create any type of MG action. It appears sometimes they do go after triggers.

Because the ATF took the position that the FRT "automatically" caused the multiple shots (in a semi auto rifle) and argued that only one press of the trigger occurred. Instead of asking Congress to modify the statute to address new technology, they tried to shoehorn the FRT into the existing statutory language.

 

[trekkerpaul]

This is how you cut your barrel down.

 

[lucusloc]

This seems logical but why did ATF go after forced reset triggers? If I had an FRT in a pump action AR15 it would not create any type of MG action. It appears sometimes they do go after triggers.

The issue is not an FRT in a manual action rifle, the issue is the FRT in a semi-auto. The ATF would not care if you had an auto-sear in a manual action either, they would care you had an auto-sear at all, because the part is a drop-in replacement that can turn basically any semi-auto rifle of the correct pattern into a machine gun. Just because you currently have it in a manual action firearm is irrelevant to the ATF, they care what you could do with it, not what your are doing with it.

But this goes back to my point about innovating beyond what the law is capable of dealing with, as these new innovations completely break or circumvent the definitions within the law. The ATF thinks they have the right to redefine the law every time one of these innovations does that, like with FRT devices that completely blow away any prior notions of "active" and "passive" actuation. But the ATF does not have the right to write law, which is the only way they can do that within our current legal paradigm.

People want FA stuff to play with, and if the law stipulates that they cannot do that one way, well people will just develop another way to do it. It started with bump fire, then went to dedicated bump stocks, then hand cranks, then various kinds of "active" triggers and FRTs. . . Even if the ATF is successful in banning FRTs there will just be some other innovation in short order as people work around the new limitation. The only way to lock this down for good is to legislate some kind of actual Rounds Per Minute limit that anyone exceeding would be liable for. And the next question after that is how the hell do you even enforce such a thing? Arrest every quick-draw cowboy action shooter out there?

At some point we just need to recognize the law is useless and needs to be tossed out, but that will only happen when the majority of people recognize the law is useless and the only way we do that is to make these devices ubiquitous. I hope we can all do our part to make that happen.

 

[crstrode]

By this logic, a full-auto machine gun without a trigger would be perfectly legal.

Point it at a victim, slam in a mag, and thar she blows!

 

[lucusloc]

By this logic, a full-auto machine gun without a trigger would be perfectly legal.

Point it at a victim, slam in a mag, and thar she blows!

I am pretty sure they would consider the act of slamming in the mag the "trigger" in that case. You actuated the gun by putting in the mag, ergo that is the trigger.

 

[User 1234]

By this logic, a full-auto machine gun without a trigger would be perfectly legal.

Point it at a victim, slam in a mag, and thar she blows!

The federal definition defines the frame or receiver of a machine gun to always be a machine gun. Even if cut in half, but not torch cut/destroyed in their specifically-mandated manner.

 

[lucusloc]

The federal definition defines the frame or receiver of a machine gun to always be a machine gun. Even if cut in half, but not torch cut/destroyed in their specifically-mandated manner.

This gets a little more complicated with the registered trigger mechanisms like lightning links or shoe strings. Those can be dropped into any semi-auto receiver without making the receiver itself a machine gun. The serial number goes with the trigger mechanism in this case, and whatever it gets attached to is considered to be properly registered until the serialized device is again removed.

Is this rule in full compliance with the law as written? Not by my understanding. Does the ATF care? Not one bit. Has anyone challenged them on this particular issue? Not to my recollection.

 

[User 1234]

You won't get an argument from me on that. The whole gun control scheme is a mess. Like prohibition on items instead of enforcement of crimes of personal behavior, it doesn't produce actual results. Countless felons are out there with full auto pistols using switches they ordered from China, but they get arrested and released the next day. Meanwhile FRT gets the heat because it is an easy target.

 

[lucusloc]

You won't get an argument from me on that. The whole gun control scheme is a mess. Like prohibition on items instead of enforcement of crimes of personal behavior, it doesn't produce actual results. Countless felons are out there with full auto pistols using switches they ordered from China, but they get arrested and released the next day. Meanwhile FRT gets the heat because it is an easy target.

When the goal is control going after actual criminals is a low priority. Criminals can be busted at any time if they get uppity with their betters, and past that they serve as useful scare-mongers to drive less informed people to advocate for more controlling laws. More criminals is a feature, not a bug.

It's the people who try to own these devices, normalize them and not cause any widespread societal havoc that are the real threat to the elite. These are the people showing it is not the device that is the problem it is the criminals (whom the government is failing to contain) that are the problem. The more they are challenged on this the more they will try to clamp down on otherwise innocent people with malum prohibitum laws instead of, you know, dealing with the actual thugs hurting innocent people. This clamp down will be complete with full throated condemnation against the innocent, attempting to paint them as the source of all the damage actually caused by rampant and uncontrolled criminal activity (see; feature! not bug.) regardless of the tools actually being used by the majority of said criminals (e.g. "assault weapons" like the AR-15 et. al. being the primary target of bans when long guns of any kind are used in only a tiny fraction of all violent crime.).

Gun control has never been about crime control. If it were it would have been behaviorally based, not capability based. Defining bad behavior is a whole lot easier and more effective at outlining an intended outcome that trying to control some kind of narrowly defined capability that could have endless implementations with even more yet to be imagined. You want a law against shooting someone? Simply say "don't shoot someone" instead of trying to define some random object that shoots and saying "this thing is banned." I can come up with some other thing that shoots that does not fit the prior definition and just shoot someone with that. There are plenty of airguns that already rival traditional chemically powered arms, electronically propelled arms are just hitting their early stride and directed energy stuff is on the horizon. None of them are covered by any existing law, and even if you add them what else will be next?

But we do have to be wary, because they have a motivation to tighten the nose as much as they can. If they cannot control "full auto equivalent" technology they may just decide to switch gears and go after all repeating arms, citing (correctly) that any of them can have their rate of fire enhanced to be functionally identical to ye olden day and traditional bullet hose. This is already a point of discussion in gun control circles, and has been proposed as law in a few places already. Our only hope is to expand the concept of "in common use" not just in the courts but in the public consciousness as well. It is a lot harder to ban something when everyone owns one than if they are near fictional unicorns.