Which Side Plate is Controlled on a Maxim?

[ordnance]

I recently encountered an LMG 08/15 aircraft Maxim in an estate. The owners are still looking for papers but nothing has surfaced yet. Assuming nothing is found, it will likely be a parts kit in the future.

 

A bit of searching online brought up some lively discussions a few years ago regarding which side plate is the registered item on Maxim guns, right or left side. Has this issue been settled definitively? I believe ATF still views the right side plate as the controlled part, correct? Thanks for any insight.

[RoscoeTurner]

Your answer - https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/ruling/2010-3-identification-maxim-side-plate-receivers/download

Held, the right side-plate of a Vickers/Maxim-type firearm, manufactured with its camming lobe affixed in the proper location, and without an ATF approved block that prevents installation of machinegun fire control components, is a machinegun receiver, and therefore, a machinegun as that term is defined by the Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. 921(a)(23), the National Firearms Act, 26 U.S.C. 5845(b ), and their implementing regulations, 27 CFR 478.11 and 479.11.

[ordnance]

Thank you. Just what I thought but didn't know where it was in black and white.

[Black River Militaria CII]

Just keep in mind, as a reference to the ongoing disfunction of ATF, that the LEFT sideplate was the controlled part, i.e. a "machine gun" for most of the years of legal manufacture and registration of MGs for private possession between Dec. 2 '68 and May 19, '86.

The change, some years ago now, to the RIGHT sideplate as the controlled part is a perfect example of ATF creating a problem resulting from an incredibly stupid import blunder. Instead of simply relying on the longstanding protocol of the LEFT plate as the controlled part and cleaning up their mess they cobbled up the ridiculous hodgepodge of the right plate designation. Having been using registered MG08 LEFT sideplates to build other Maxims, which was approved by ATF, I wasted a lot of time talking various ATF personnel and trying to make the case to keep the LEFT plate as the controlled part. They had no interest in listening to someone with longstanding experience with building Maxims and knowledgeable about the history of registered Maxims in the NFRTR, but used the hypothetical perspective of their lawyers and inexperienced field personnel as the basis for their twisted hodgepodge non-solution. Bureaucratic idiocy at it's finest. We just have to dance to their tunes played by their awful band. FWIW

Edited December 7, 2020 by Black River Militaria CII