Tag Archives: NFA

Hmpf, the SHUSH Act is now a thing

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So you have no doubt heard me talk about the Hearing Protection Act which would eliminate the $200 transfer tax on suppressors by dropping them from NFA rules, but still requires they should be transferred through federal firearms licensees after a background check, regulating them as firearms.

It’s got a ton of sponsors in the House ( 150+, including some Dems) but is likely to stall in the Senate where it only has enough for a serious card game and needs 60.

Well, with that in mind, last week the SHUSH (Silencers Helping Us Save Hearing) Act dropped which would not only remove suppressors from National Firearms Act requirements — a goal of the rival Hearing Protection Act — but also classify them as simple accessories which could be sold over the counter, just like magazines, or butt stocks, or just scopes. It seems odd after more than 80 years of NFA regulation, but that’s how they are sold in the UK and several other countries with gun laws more strict than ours.

Gun control groups don’t know whether to shit or go blind, saying every crook and killer in the future will have a hushable gatt– but in all honesty, you can make an illegal suppressor today from common household items anyway and they are rarely (ATF says ~30 cases in 2015) used in crime, so I’m not sure how factual that argument holds.

Anyway, more on the SHUSH Act in my column at Guns.com

And this great bit from A Scanner Darkly (who doesn’t love PKD) below, and case in point as to why you don’t want to try and suppress the average revolver.

 

About your grandpa’s old machine gun in the closet…

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A Japanese Type 11 light machine gun– Kijiro Nambu’s take on the French 8mm Hotchkiss chambered in 6.5x50mm Arisaka– captured on Kwajalein Atoll in 1944 by American troops. Such guns, if not registered before 1968 and not demilled, are illegal in the U.S. (Photo: Rock Island Auction)

Many veterans legally brought back captured enemy weapons from overseas in the wake of America’s wars. Provided they had the right paperwork, some could properly register NFA items as Title II firearms before 1968. Others, who either didn’t have the paperwork or chose not to register, illegally owned their trophies after that date and often these guns are still in circulation– putting the possessor at risk of up to 10 years in prison.

Well that could change.

Legislation introduced in both chambers of Congress Tuesday would open a 180-day amnesty for veterans or their family to register guns captured overseas.

The bipartisan Veterans Heritage Firearms Act aims to allow former service members or their family to declare guns brought back to the states before Oct. 31, 1968 without fear of prosecution.

The bill would briefly open the National Firearm Registration and Transfer Record to veterans and their family to register certain firearms. The NFRTR is the federal government’s database of National Firearms Act items including machine guns, suppressors, short barreled rifles and shotguns, and destructive devices.

More in my column at Guns.com.

Varmint package from SilencerCo and CZ

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Utah-based SilencerCo last week unveiled the latest entry to its Summit line of limited edition customized suppressor/firearm packages with a CZ rimfire offering.

Centered around a CZ 455 Varmint, the package includes interchangeable 17.2-inch heavy barrels in .22LR and .17HMR, each with 1/2x28TPI threads to accept the matching SilencerCo Sparrow suppressor. Each barrel is serialized to the receiver.

I must admit, I do like the aesthic of old world craftsmanship with hand-rubbed walnut furniture, and a nice CNC can.

We’re trading up, says St. Louis Metro PD as they cash out Tommy gun cache

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From the 1920s through the 1960s, many civilian police forces, such as these cops in Tacoma, Wash, had a few Tommy guns on the racks “just in case” phasing them out after Vietnam with 1033 Program M16A1s

The St. Louis Metro Police Department is parting with most of its huge and historic Thompson submachine gun collection in a move to get a good deal on new duty guns.

Twenty-seven of the city’s 30 Tommy guns will be sold to Midwest Distributors for $22,000 apiece. All told, the Kentucky-based firm will pay $618,500 for the transferrable .45 ACP s sub guns and some other surplus weapons. This is on top of $597,000 paid by Minneapolis-based Bill Hicks & Co. for 1,748 used Beretta handguns currently carried by the department.

The money will go to offset the cost of new Berettas at $450 a pop to equip every officer with as well as a quantity of AR-15s to be used as patrol rifles.

More in my column at Guns.com.

Ruger shows off Silent-SR integrally suppressed 10/22 barrel

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Designed to work with any 10/22 Takedown rimfire, Ruger debuted its new ISB last week.

Nope, that is not an O/U double shotgun barrel. It’s a 16-inch long integrally suppressed 10/22 barrel.

Billed to be able to reduce the report of standard velo .22LR to 113.2dB on average, the lightweight Silent-SR ISB is Ruger’s follow up to their first suppressor introduced last year — the screw on Silent-SR. Designed to work with their new Takedown series of 10/22, the 16.12-inch suppressed barrel is a simple changeout and its 2.6-pounds retains a center of gravity close to the rifle’s receiver.

You get the idea

More in my column at Guns.com (including a look at that beautiful baffle system). 

Hearing Protection Act ‘alive and well’

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Cutaway of the Maxim Model 15 “silencer” on a 1903 mockup.

Since 1934, the federal government has treated devices designed to muffle or suppress the report of firearms as Title II devices that required registration under the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record and mandated transfers that included a $200 tax stamp. The HPA would repeal this requirement and treat suppressors as firearms – which would allow them to be transferred through regular federal firearms license holders to anyone not prohibited from possessing them after the buyer passes an FBI instant background check.

We spoke with industry insiders about the Hearing Protection Act on the eve of the 146th National Rifle Association Annual Meetings and Exhibits in Atlanta last week, who argued the measure has a fighting chance.

More in my column at Guns.com

Got to bump into some groovy hardware last week

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So I hung out at NRA Show for a few days last week. Got to see some cool new stuff and write about it.

Including Springfield Armory’s new XD-E hammer fired compact 9mm single stack


Which complemented FN’s new 509.

So now FN is making striker-fired guns while Springfield XD is making hammer fired. What the what?

Then there was Colt’s new 70 series Gold Cup Trophy and Competition models (yup, no firing pin block).

Those G10 scales, tho

And Savage’s Fox A Grade SXS double shotgun series, which are really sweet and feature bone and charcoal case color-finished receivers over black walnut furniture (though original Foxes are cheaper).

And nope, this one is not made in Turkey

But the coolest thing (that I am soon going to be T&E’ing, squeeeee) is Remington’s Tac-14 870 that I was able to get the first media peek at while touring Big Green’s Huntsville Factory prior to the show.

At 26.25 inches overall and with a Raptor Shockwave pistol grip, the 12-gauge’s 14-inch cylinder bore barrel is not a National Firearms Act regulated item as it is a “firearm” and not an SBS or AOW, thus no tax stamp is required under federal law, though state and local laws may apply.

I will for sure keep you posted on that one…

ATF’s NFA branch moving on up

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The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives has split its National Firearms Act branch into a separate division in hopes of providing more oversight and efficiency.

The new NFA Division will consist of an Industry Processing Branch, focusing on processing forms from the private sector, and a Government Support Branch centered on law enforcement.

The IPB will see the regulatory body dedicate an entire branch to handling the processing of consumer-directed documents including Form 1 and Form 4 applications for the making and transfer of NFA items such as suppressors, and short-barreled rifles and shotguns.

But what does this mean? I talked to the experts to find out…

More in my column at Guns.com

Rare transferable anti-tank gun likely headed to the scrappers

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This beautiful Lahti was listed for sale on social media for $10,000 with a matching toolkit, four magazines and 10 rounds of 20mm ammunition. The thing is, it was improperly transferred and now the feds have it. (Photo: The Rifleman)

The L39 was designed by Aimo Lahti, the Thomas Edison of Finnish gun engineers, and is a109-pound semi-automatic rifle built around the largest 20mm shell the in existence in 1939. Using the Swiss 20x138mmB Solothurn Long cartridge, the gun was readily capable of piercing 20mm of armor at 100-meters and 16mm out to 500 meters with enough energy to put most of the Soviet tanks of the era on the menu. While Russian tanks became more heavily armored as the war progressed, the L39 was still valuable as an anti-material gun and used much as the Barrett .50 cal is employed today.

Just 1,850 production version L39s were built in Jyaskyla at Valtion Kivaaritehdas, the state rifle factory, and about 1,000 were surplus in the 1960s, many arriving in the U.S.

And last week a  Federal Firearms Licensee who wrote some hot checks to get tranferrable one from a collector in Michigan, then tried to resell it without the proper NFA paperwork, was found guilty of illegal possession of a destructive device, meaning the gun, now confiscated, will likely get hacked up.

More in my column at Guns.com

Looking for a deal on a Tommy gun?

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That stock comes off, you know?

Plymouth Borough, outside of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, isn’t big, but they have had a vintage and transferrable Tommy gun in their city’s arsenal since Prohibition that they want to get rid of if the price is right.

Furthermore, it’s not your average burp gun– it’s a Navy overstamp 1921 Colt-made Thompson.


Often thought of by militaria collectors as the holy grail of U.S. sub guns, the overstamp came about when Auto Ordnance moved to offload their stock of Colt-made M1921 Thompsons and, modifying them slightly by reducing their cyclic rate of fire from 800 rounds per minute to a more pedestrian 600, over-stamped the “1” in 1921 with an “8.”

The Title II/Class 3 weapon is listed on Gunbroker, with a current price of $28,000 and two days to go before the bidding ends.

In recent years several agencies have liquidated their stocks of aging Tommy guns including St.Louis PD who put a cool $1 million worth of the .45 ACP SMGs up for sale in 2014 and another North Carolina department who moved to swap a pair of Thompsons for 88 newer semi-auto Bushmasters.

In 2015, the town of Kinston, North Carolina, who had picked up an overstamp to ward off possible tobacco payroll robbers in 1935, sold their gun for $36,750, which is about average for the model.

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