re: Updated: Full auto lower laws.. Answer from ATF on page 2

quote:

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A firearm, as defined by the National Firearms Act (NFA), 26 U.S.C. 5845(a)(3), is made when unassembled parts are placed in close proximity in such a way that they: (a) serve no useful purpose other than to make a rifle having a barrel or barrels of less than 16 inches in length; or (b) convert a complete weapon into such an NFA firearm.

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part (a), Do you realize how ambiguous this is? A short barrel has 1 MILLION useful and legal purposes for owning other than making an SBR. Making this stick in court for simply owning a short barrel would require a lot of self incrimination.

part (b) until you install that short barrel or upper with a short barrel onto the lower you have not converted a firearm or created one. So this would also not apply to simply owning a short barrel or upper with short barrel.

quote:

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Generally, a weapon registered as a machine gun would not need to be re-registered as a short barreled rifle if it had a barrel less than 16". If you change the barrel length, overall length or caliber of your registered machine gun, notify us in writing and we will update the registration database.

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And this ATF examiner/responder loses all credibility with this very first statement. A machine gun could never be registered or re-registered as a short barreled rifle. A short barreled rifle is made from a rifle. By definition a rifle is a firearm designed to fire only a single projectile through a rifled bore for each single pull of the trigger.