Jump to content

Pre 1900 Machine Guns Ownership Question


Recommended Posts

Ok guy I have a question that I thought of a couple weeks ago but forgot about until now, are machine guns built before 1899 restricted in anyway? According to Title 18, U.S Code, Section 921(A)(16) all guns manufactured before 1899 are considered antiques and therefore exempt from any form of gun control because they aren't considered firearms, so could someone buy a Colt-Browning M1895 or a maximum machine gun built before 1899 and have it shipped to there door the same as if it was a 1863 Springfield without having a class 3 license? Just curious how the laws work for things like that Edited by 1952HRA
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I took his post to mean meeting the definition of "antique", not merely removed from the NFA as a collector item.... as always could be smoking bamboo. If the former is the case, there are different definitions - under the GCA, you can have age or ammunition; in the NFA, you need age and ammunition (for anything using fixed ammunition - example a 12 pound Napoleon built yesterday is an antique due to the ignition system). Fun part is since "not readily available in the ordinary channels of commercial trade" is not defined by congress and has not been define by ATF in a regulation, so hard telling what you may get if you ask.

 

Antique firearm. Any firearm not designed or redesigned for using rimfire or conventional centerfire ignition with fixed ammunition and manufactured in or before 1898 (including any matchlock, flintlock, percussion cap, or similar type of ignition system or replica thereof, whether actually manufactured before or after the year 1898) and also any firearm using fixed ammunition manufactured in or before 1898, for which ammunition is no longer manufactured in the United States and is not readily available in the ordinary channels of commercial trade.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good explanation! I thought he just wanted examples. Pretty broad, in my opinion, to allow such latitude in what constitutes “ channels of commerce” as a dividing line between NFA status and not. There are a whole bunch of DDs that should not be NFA in that light. And, given the current breadth of repro ammo, including for the 13mm T Gewehr, it should be back under NFA. Don’t tell them.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Something else that could get interesting with such a thing - what about caliber change capability? If said MG could be easily converted, would ATF say it's not an antique or if you converted it to a caliber that was available, would you at that point turn it into an unregistered MG? "Constructive possession of a non-antique"? If you have a Lichtenstein Maxim chambered for 7.654 Kemosabe built in 1897 (exempt from registration and not a "firearm" under the GCA or NFA), but then replace the Kemosabe barrel with 8mm Mauser... or have in your possession an 8mm Mauser barrel. Could get to be a spider web. Wish I had a real life scenario to cite as an example, but all hypothetical.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's

 

Something else that could get interesting with such a thing - what about caliber change capability? If said MG could be easily converted, would ATF say it's not an antique or if you converted it to a caliber that was available, would you at that point turn it into an unregistered MG? "Constructive possession of a non-antique"? If you have a Lichtenstein Maxim chambered for 7.654 Kemosabe built in 1897 (exempt from registration and not a "firearm" under the GCA or NFA), but then replace the Kemosabe barrel with 8mm Mauser... or have in your possession an 8mm Mauser barrel. Could get to be a spider web. Wish I had a real life scenario to cite as an example, but all hypothetical.

 

It's one of those seemingly complex yet simple things

 

1st off the 1935 NFA stands alone from the 1968 GCA

What happened in 68' is Congress created a new Gun act but also expanded the NFA as well by adding dewats and the new category of DDs to the 35' act

Understand when the NFA was passed it incorporated no antique exemption language, it never has. Thus in the dirty 30s quite a few things became regulated under the new act we don't really think of today.

 

One wild example we used to have was a Springfield 1856 cap and ball Dragoons Pistol Carbine. That one was rather deeply stamped on the grip with IRS numbers and came with original Amnesty registration paperwork. Picked it up for a song due to the butchery

This brings up a small sidebar in that extremely few folks abided by the new code. I mean you really don't run across many examples of this and Treasury really wasn't enforcing it to the depths they could have.

Think about how many Pocket Rifles and Bicycle guns are out there these days with the original matching detachable shoulder stocks

Those were still regulated NFA well into the 70s

 

Anyways sometime in the 50s Treasury removed flint and Cap ignition from the NFA. Think about this, until then a .69 Tower flinter pistol from the Revolutionary War was technically a short barreled shotgun. These sorts of actions were the actual root of the later exemptionary language incorporated in the later GCA of 68'

No, it really wasn't the NRA working on the behalf of the collecting community.

I grew up around some rather elderly collectors, guys who lived through all this and explained it all to me in detail.

Understand, there was enormous apathy among Collectors regarding the NFA when it came to SBRs and early stocked pistols

Plenty of C96 Mausers out there with matching serialized stocks. Here's the thing, practically none of them have been previously registered and they were all again regulated up into the 70s, even pre 1899 examples such as Cone Hammer variations.

 

Now lets go through the antique exemptions in the 68' GCA

It's really pretty simple

Everything manufactured prior to 1899 has no Federal regulation unless it's covered by the National Firearms Act. Now here's where it gets funky. Anything manufactured after 1898 that is the same as a model produced in the Antique era is also unregulated so long as the ammunition is no longer available in ordinary channels of commercial trade...read that again very carefully because words mean things in all this.

 

What this meant was until rather recently a Winchester 1886 made in the 20s in .33WCF was unregulated as the ammo was no longer off the shelf, same with a 94' in .25-35WCF. When Shiloh 1st started making Sharps rifles years ago the .45 models transferred on a 4473 while the big 50s could be sent straight to your door

Another great example is until into the 90s BATF regarded the 7.63mm Mauser as not commercially available thus all Broomhandles were default Antiques

Turner Kirkland of Dixie Gun Works sold such pistols direct to non FFLs in his collectors catalogs and yeah that was with BATF input.as that round wasn't manufactured even though 7.62mm Tokarev is basically the same darn thing

 

So what changed ?

One word, INTERNET

The web opened up a whole new market. Obsolete rounds suddenly became available within a few mouse clicks particularly with custom shops like Buffalo Arms selling loaded ammo for things like .236 Lee Navy and about everything else

yeah that .33WCF 1886 made in the 20s became a modern regulated firearm

Hope that sort of helps explain how that works guys.

 

So Bubba brought up artillery

Well that's all up to Technology branch but they generally are only going to act when someone makes a formal request to them.

Actually they have removed quite a few DDs from not only the NFA but reduced them to unregulated Antique status

Krupp mountain guns, most of the early 37mm cannon like the Hotchkiss used at Wounded Knee, Pratt & Whiney rotary revolving cannon & a number of others on a case by case basis. Unfortunately ATFE really does a poor job updating the published NFA exemption list.

This again actually started early after Congress created new code

The issue post 68' were the thousands of DDs scattered across America sitting in public as well as private hands as static displays in Parks and such

The bureau nearly immediately exempted non fixed period ignition types and followed that by gradually exempting heavy guns up into the Spanish American War period running fixed shells.

 

There is actually a very niche non NFA community into this. Anyone interested should look into the Artilleryman magazine

They cover the vintage breech loading cannon extremely well and have been around for many years.

The most publicity this has probably received has been due to the History channels Pawn Stars, past that the general NFA world is largely clueless

 

Now skipping back a bit to the Maxim deal

Some years ago I was offered an 1885 .45 Maxim up in Canada. It needed some work but it was under a Grand funny money. Tried to get BATF to exempt it, no luck

An associate attempted the same thing with a USMC 1895 Colt in .236 Lee. That one was in the basement of an old VFW. Same situation

I figure the full auto Maxim Pom Pom guns ended up exempted was their 37mm round, basically the same as used in the Pratt & Whitney and Hotchkiss guns

 

Something to remember is up to 1968 there was no federal regulation code over DDs,

20mm ATRs, even a 105mm was the same as a single shot .22 boys rifle

heck live mortars and ammo were cash and carry. Most miss all this these days

The main headache was shipping HE shells

One of the old timers I grew up knowing was a crazy old Doctor in the Dakotas, guy had just a mess of live artillery. He used to talk about sending a truck out to the East coast back in the late 50s to pick up a load of HE shells, guy had concrete bunkers out on his farm stacked up with crates. After he passed family liquidated some of the guns to Lamont, never found out where all the shells ended up. He managed to get his guns Amnesty registered but never bothered with the slab cracking crates of HE

 

The 1913 T Gewher was removed from the NFA early on as well, like maybe mid 70s. Frankly it's likely that we could get the .55 Boyes excluded as well. Maybe even the PTRS in 14.5mm

The key thing in all this isn't availability of ammo but mostly whether the guns are ever likely to face criminal abuse

main thing there is rarity & market value

 

Hope this all helps somewhat in explaining some of this

as I stated, it's actually pretty simple and very straight forward

The Feds have a long history of getting crapped on, truth is the real problem has always been an ignorant Congress composing vague code

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...