Homemade AR-15 Industry Surges-Regulators Please Take Note
Does an individual need a license to make a firearm for personal use?
No, a license is not required to make a firearm solely for personal use. However, a license is required to manufacture firearms for sale or distribution. The law prohibits a person from assembling a non–sporting semiautomatic rifle or shotgun from 10 or more imported parts, as well as firearms that cannot be detected by metal detectors or x–ray machines. In addition, the making of an NFA firearm requires a tax payment and advance approval by ATF.
[18 U.S.C. 922(o), (p) and (r); 26 U.S.C. 5822; 27 CFR 478.39, 479.62 and 479.105]
Action begets reaction. Some may think I am trying to marginalize regulation. Full stop. I’m calling for a specific set to apply. A very strict set. The idea is it applies across the board. All 50 states. Every variant of the type is subject. If a rifle combines high capacity, high caliber and semi auto fire it would be on the list.
As has been suggested by others right here at LGF, this kind of gun needs to be added to the same list as full up machine guns from the National Firearms Act. That way it need not matter how you got that gun frame. It matters that you have it in an approved inspect-able circumstance. Or you don’t and jail is a very real possibility. Sale bans can’t stop shop made. 1940’s tech was up to the job of shop made assault guns. Then CNC. Now all that plus 3d print additive processes.
For those unfamiliar with the NFA, here is a link. If you take a look I think you will agree it’s an effective frame work that has been court tested, adjusted, and has little to fear from any legal standpoint.
Wired-Since the fall of 2014, Defense Distributed has sold approximately three thousand of the $1,500 devices it calls the Ghost Gunner, a computer-controlled, one-foot cubed milling machine designed to let anyone carve their own aluminum body of an AR-15 at home. Since all other parts of the gun can be bought without any regulation, the result is a lethal weapon that’s free from background checks, waiting periods, serial numbers, or any other government involvement.
On a typical day, Defense Distributed sells four or five of its gun-making machines, according to Wilson. But on the day after the Orlando gun massacre, it sold seven. The second day after the killings, as Democratic senators were filibustering, it sold 11. In all, Defense Distributed’s total revenue has jumped from around $30,000 a week to more than $50,000 last week, the most sales it’s seen since the hype around the Ghost Gunner’s initial launch 20 months ago.
Older methods of making an untraceable AR-15 are exploding, too. Santa Ana, California-based 80 Percent Arms, for instance, specializes in “80 percent lower receivers”: bodies of AR-15s and AR-10s that are left 20 percent unfinished and thus unregulated. DIY gunsmiths can complete that last bit of machining themselves, with tools ranging from a Ghost Gunner’s automated milling to a simple drill press and a set of jigs. The day of the Orlando shooting, 80 Percent Arms’ sales spiked fivefold, then sixfold on the day after and sevenfold the day after that, says the company’s president Tilden Smith. “When Obama gets on the air talking about gun control, that kicks off a buying frenzy. Everyone flips out,” Smith says. “They’re incentivized to get all the 80-percent stuff they can now, because they don’t think they’ll be able to get it next year.”
More at Wired: After Orlando, the Homemade AR-15 Industry Surges
Video ATF vault home made guns
Youtube Video