NFA Question

[Wysiwyg101]

Please, excuse my general ignorance on this subject. I know that, to purchase a suppressor or full auto firearm, you have to fill out the form and submit it (either using the trust system or getting the local law enforcement to sign off on every single item) and $200 cash to the ATF and then wait several months for that to happen. I've heard that you need to go through the same rigamarole in buying a Short Barreled Rifle (IE-anything under 16" in barrel length) as well as a Pistol (something that doesn't have a stock on it and is also kinda short barreled).

Here are my questions. Let's say that Joe Blow does all that. He pays his money and submits the form and then several months later he is the proud owner of a suppressor. A year or two goes by and Joe Blow is undergoing a financial struggle and wants to sell that suppressor. Can he just sell it to someone? Does the tax stamp follow the item or is the tax stamp on him and a potential buyer has to get his own tax stamp?

The reason I ask is that I see folks selling SBR's and "AR Pistols" all the time. So, I'm curious as to what the rules are for those items.

[The Marshal]

AR Pistols do not require the NFA Stamp. UNTIL you put a Stock on them, then they become a short barreled rifle (SBR).
SBR and Suppressors require the $200 Tax Stamp per item.
Once you decide you no longer want it, you can sell to another individual who will have to acquire the $200 Stamp (Out of State = $400), and once you have that paperwork in hand you can release the SBR/Suppressor to them. Looks like they get a new Tax Stamp, and yours is invalidated.
The In State sale also allows you to sell it to someone under 21 (that is a Federal Rule for Commercial Sales) so they could be 18-20 yr old.

My understanding.

[dcphoto]

AR Pistols do not require the NFA Stamp. UNTIL you put a Stock on them, then they become a short barreled rifle (SBR).
SBR and Suppressors require the $200 Tax Stamp per item.
Once you decide you no longer want it, you can sell to another individual who will have to acquire the $200 Stamp (Out of State = $400), and once you have that paperwork in hand you can release the SBR/Suppressor to them. Looks like they get a new Tax Stamp, and yours is invalidated.
The In State sale also allows you to sell it to someone under 21 (that is a Federal Rule for Commercial Sales) so they could be 18-20 yr old.

My understanding.

All correct, except the transfer must go through a Class 2 or 3 FFL. The reason it costs $400 is because it costs $200 to transfer to the FFL, then another $200 from the FFL to the buyer. Typically the buyer pays both transfer fees. Try to sell in-state; out of state transfers create more headaches.

[denwego]

Incidentally, there's another option in some situations for the remorseful buyer. Some firearms are defined by their mutable characteristics; a Remington 870 with a 14" barrel, for example, would be regulated because of the short barrel. If you made a SBS/SBR of some sort and wanted to sell it without the hassle of NFA issues, it is acceptable to modify back to a non-regulated form and then destroy / remove the means to revert it to the regulated. In my example case of a short barreled Remington 870, if you removed the 14" barrel, replaced it with a 18.5" barrel off the shelf, then destroyed or sold or otherwise got the short barrel out of your possession, you can then sell or transfer your now non-short-barrel-shotgun as a non-NFA item. If you do something like that, the new owner in turn would need to pay the tax again as if it were manufactured anew if the new owner wanted to SBS it. Also, the ATF asks you to give them a call and ask them to remove it from the registry, but I've never read a requirement to do that other than the many issues you could personally avoid by doing that.

Related is something cross-state travelers sometimes use for convenience since you can't take a SBS or SBR over state lines without prior ATF approval. I could take that a SBR AR-15, swap the upper to a non-regulated configuration, and travel to another state as long as I didn't possess the short barreled upper while I was going.

Since you mention a silencer, I'd note that silencers and machine guns are irritating exceptions to logical convenience. Not only are fully built silencers regulated, each component used to construct a silencer is itself regulated as a silencer. This is why they're such a pain to fix if they break; if the tube cracks and you want to replace it, you get to pay the tax all over again, because law & regulations state you are "building" a whole new silencer, and likewise, if you want to destroy a silencer, every single individual component must be destroyed to the standards the ATF feels must be met before they can be considered deregulated scrap.

With machine guns, the receiver as well as all the individual components which allow it to fire fully automatically are forever considered "machine guns", even if you were to somehow mechanically remove its ability to fire fully automatically in fact. An example I can think of there is if you had a registered M-16 lower receiver, replaced the fire control group with a new commercial semi-auto group, welded the auto sear pin hole closed with steel, bent the frame so it couldn't fit a lightning link, and then welded a single-shot sled into the mag well, the receiver would still be forever a machine gun in the law's eyes. The ATF also considers a machine gun configuration almost to "stain" component parts - you might get the full auto firing group with an AK-47 parts kit, because it's not a machine gun until it's built into a receiver capable of housing those parts. But, if you removed the full auto firing group from a registered full auto AK-47, each of those little pieces of metal are now magically little machine guns themselves. Logical, qué no?

Anecdotally, this was a bigger issue in the 1960s - many fully automatic M2 carbines were modified by the government to permanent semi-auto configurations and then sold to the public as surplus with no NFA issues. Years later, the ATF got hard nosed about once-a-machine-gun-always-a-machine-gun, only to realize that there were tens of thousands of "illegal machine gun" receivers floating around the country. You still hear the occasional one popping up at surplus/collectors shows, but it's obviously rarer now than it was 50 years ago.

[CleverNickname]

Here are my questions. Let's say that Joe Blow does all that. He pays his money and submits the form and then several months later he is the proud owner of a suppressor. A year or two goes by and Joe Blow is undergoing a financial struggle and wants to sell that suppressor. Can he just sell it to someone? Does the tax stamp follow the item or is the tax stamp on him and a potential buyer has to get his own tax stamp?

There is a tax levied for each transfer between two legal entities, unless both are licensed as FFL/SOTs, or one or more are government agencies. The stamp is evidence of the tax payment.

As a practical matter, the market for used suppressors owned by non-licensees is limited. To sell it to someone out-of-state would mean two taxes (one from the current owner to an FFL/SOT in the buyer's state, another from that FFL/SOT to the buyer), which means they're already $200 behind. The seller will want a $200 discount on top of paying less for a used suppressor, so you're not going to make back a lot of the money you spent if you try to sell one. Selling in-state will mean it's just a $200 transfer direct to the buyer, but still, most people will want the latest and greatest suppressor design, not your old model from however many years ago.

If you buy a suppressor, just think of it as money you're never realistically going to get back.

[winters]

Here are my questions. Let's say that Joe Blow does all that. He pays his money and submits the form and then several months later he is the proud owner of a suppressor. A year or two goes by and Joe Blow is undergoing a financial struggle and wants to sell that suppressor. Can he just sell it to someone? Does the tax stamp follow the item or is the tax stamp on him and a potential buyer has to get his own tax stamp?

If you buy a suppressor, just think of it as money you're never realistically going to get back.

Thats what i consider a suppressor purchase as. Don't buy one if you even think you might want to sell it. Its a major pain in the behind.

Now some 15,000$ + full auto rifle yes it would have resale value.