While there's a lot of good that happened in the 1986 Firearms Owners Protection Act (FOPA), NFA stuff took a double whammy.
Everyone knows about the Hughes amendment that sealed up making new machine guns for the unwashed hoi polloi.
What nobody talks about is this is also where any part of a suppressor became to a suppressor in and of itself. Creating the strange world where the serialed part is a suppressor and so is every sub-part as well.
Yet, just one registration is required for an assembly.
FOPA broke suppressors.
I can make all the parts for a single suppressor. Serialize the tube.
I can repair the sub-parts to my hearts content. But I cannot make a single replacement part. Making a new part to replace a damaged one is making a new suppressor! I am not allowed to have spare parts pre-made against damage. Considering that my design includes three 8-32 screws and lock washers, does having a baggy of them constitute several new suppressors?
This is the only place in guns where this happens. It's like if your rifle needed a new flash-hider having to go to an FFL to have it delivered and fill out a 4473 for it.
Worse, yet! It's utterly unenforceable. If I make my own suppressor, I can clearly make baffles at will. If one is willing to break the letter of the law they just make new baffles, destroy the old ones and just never talk about it. It makes you wonder how many people are doing just that. They have a baffle strike and "repair" the damaged baffle... by making a whole new one.
The sooner we get suppressors removed from the NFA the better, I says.
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At the gun show over here, there was a vendor selling suppressors and parts for them. He had a busy table, and was demonstrating how to screw the can onto his threaded AR and then drop a series of baffles into it to complete the suppressor. I didn't spend any time there, but it was nice to see.
ReplyDeleteMy #1 wish for changes to firearms law is to see silencers becoming unregulated. I've never understood why it should be considered a firearm.