Under federal law (individual state law may differ), a machine gun is defined as: “any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger . . . .”
26 U.S.C. § 5845(b).
Internal Revenue Ruling 55-528 provides, in part:
Any crank-operated gear-driven Gatling gun (produced under 1862 to 1893 patents) employing a cam action to perform the functions of repeatedly cocking and firing the weapon, as well as any such gun actuated by an electric motor in lieu of a hand-operated crank (produced under 1893 and later patents), while being a forerunner of fully automatic machine guns, is not designed to shoot automatically or semiautomatically more than one shot with a single function of the trigger. Such weapons are held not to be firearms within the purview of the National Firearms Act.
Thus, the Revenue Ruling provides that a Gatling gun is not a machine gun.
That said, in 2000, the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois stated that “Revenue rulings, however, do not have the force of law; they represent only the IRS' opinion of the law.”
United States v. Fleischli, 119 F.Supp.2d 819, 821 (C.D. Ill. 2000). The Seventh Circuit affords revenue rulings only “the lowest degree of deference.”
Bankers Life and Casualty Company v. United States, 142 F.3d 973, 978 (7th Cir. 1998).
The Court in
Fleischli stated that whether a firearm similar to (or identical to) a Gatling gun was a machine gun was a factual issue for a jury to decide.
United States v. Fleischli, 119 F.Supp.2d 819, 821 (C.D. Ill. 2000).
Here is previous THR thread on the subject:
Gatling gun....NFA?