Making handguns out of shotguns or rifles?

[firestar]

I recently read that is is perfectly legal to make your own gun as long as it is not for resale. Can you make a handgun out of a cut down rifle or shotgun if you rechamber it in a handgun caliber?

For instance, can you take an old single shot 12ga shotgun and somehow rechamber it in .44mag or .357mag by using a barrel insert or something and legaly cut down a shotgun for the intent of making a handgun? Would that still be considered a sawed off shotgun if it were rechambered in .357?

Is there some law about using a gun to make another gun or do you have to start from a "non-gun" to make a gun? I don't want to commit a felony by cutting down a rifle or shotgun.

 

[Gordon]

NO! Unless you have a Class II license. I know some will talk about somehow doing this, BUT this is just the thing the ATF lives off of to destroy your life-forever. Not worth it, take it from an idiot who may have tinkered in the 'bad old days'.

 

[sanchezero]

As I understand it, you can build a firearm for your own use, but it is not transferrable in any way.

Also, you must still comply with all existing firearm laws - bbl length, capacity, etc. There are quite a few people who've made thier own guns, even from blank al/steel billets.

As far as a rebuilding a shottie into a .44 or whatever, I have no clue. Check with the ATF before you get crazy and start choppin up your grandad's old squirrel gun.

edit to add this link with some info. check the forums.

http://www.roderuscustom.tzo.com/

 

[AJ Dual]

You can use a reciever that is nominally designed for a rifle or shotgun in a pistol configuration but there's a few rules.

1. It must never have been used as a reciever in a longarm before, usually this means factory new.

2. If it accepts a rifled barrel, say a bolt action, or an semi-auto AR reciever, it can be assembled into a standard pistol if it complies with the assult pistol regs of the '94 ban.

3. If it is a shotgun reciever that was never used in a full length shotgun, or ever had a buttstock attached, it can be built into an NFA AOW (Any other weapon) regisgterable and transferable for $5. (IIRC it's only $5 if you transfer it from a licenced mfg./gunsmith, it's $200 if you apply to do it yourself.)

one example would be using a brand new bolt-action rifle reciever never used in a rifle before and building a bolt-action hunting and sillouete target pistol like a Remington XP100.

The other would be buying a Mossberg "cruiser" shotgun sold only with a pistol grip, never a stock, and converting it to an $5 AOW like the Serbu "super shorty" pump shotgun pistol.

You could also cut down a rifle or a shotgun legally if you registered it as an NFA SBR (Short Barreled Rifle) or as a SBS (Short Barreled shotgun) and paid the NFA tax and completed the papwerwork, or had a licensed manufacturer perform the modification and transfer it to you.

The other exception is on a firearm already registerd as a machinegun that has had it's NFA registration and tax paid. There are no stock or length restrictions on that. A Stetchkin or Skorpion full auto pistol is no different than a full-size M-16 in the ATF's eyes. You can change stocks and barrel length at will. I believe you only need to register additional calibers if it's convertable like an AR is with different uppers.

NFA stuff is complicated so anyone who knows more, or if I made a mistake feel free to correct me.

 

[firestar]

That sounds like a lot more hassel than I wanted to go through. I was hopeing there was a simple way to do it legally but of course not.:banghead:

I'm not sure how a single shot .44mag or .357mag is any more dangerous than a Contender which you CAN buy but who ever said the gun laws had to make any sense?

Thanks for all your help. I wasn't going to take people's word for it if they all said I could do it, I was going to verify with the ATF to be safe but now I don't see the point. What has been said seems to indicate that it is not as simple as I thought it might be.

 

[TarpleyG]

That sounds like a lot more hassel than I wanted to go through.

That's precisely why they have assanine rules such as "It must never have been used as a reciever in a longarm before" and "If it is a shotgun reciever that was never used in a full length shotgun, or ever had a buttstock attached..." To discourage anyone from doing it. Why else???

GT

 

[AJ Dual]

IIRC, but I could be full of it...

My understanding as to why the NFA even bothers to cover SBS's, SBR's, and AOW's is that the original intent of a precursor draft of NFA '34 was to make all pistols NFA items. And they didn't want the populace to improvise their own pistols by cutting down the remaining unregulated rifles and shotguns to get around such a handgun ban.

It was soon realized that adding handguns to the NFA '34 would kill the bill instantly, so the handgun provisions were dropped, but the SBR, SBS, and AOW loophole closers were never removed, either by oversight, the desire for the revenue, or some percieved notion that it would "fight crime".

I could be completely wrong, but that's what I remember reading somewhere.

Even to this day, why should it be a federal NFA violation to saw the barrel of a single shot Chipmunk single-shot bolt action below 16", when I could have something massively more powerfull like a 10mm Glock 20 that would still be much smaller?

Makes no sense from a technical or a practical standpoint, but that was never a requirement for passing a law, now was it?

 

[Ian]

Yeah, early versions of the NFA required registration of all handguns. I hand't though about the implication regarding the AOWs and SBRs, though. Interesting.

Also, if a gun is a muzzle-loader, d the same rules apply for lengths? I don't think it's illegal to chop a muzzleloading shotgun barrel down under 18", but I'm could easily be wrong...

 

[TexasVet]

if a gun is a muzzle-loader, d(o) the same rules apply for lengths?

Federally, no. To the feds, muzzleloaders and their replicas are not firearms. A lot of states consider muzzleloaders as firearms, though, regardless of what the feds say. This answer will depend on the local state laws.

 

[zahc]

I have a related question. What do you have to do to legally make a rifle out of a handgun? For example, a MkII carbine?

 

[Kharn]

zahc: Just put a >16" barrel on, and then put the stock on (do not do it in the opposite order). To return it to pistol configuration, remove the stock and then remove the barrel. Pistols retain their status as pistols forever, regardless of how many times they were outfitted with a stock and long barrel.

Kharn

 

[MuzzleBlast]

Just to make the waters muddier, what if you start with a rifle on the C&R list? I guess you couldn't make a pistol out of an M1 carbine, because that would be an "assault weapon," but what about anything that isn't both semiauto and detachable mag fed?