when is a rifle/shotgun considered a pistol?

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tostada

tostada

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I'd just like someone to explain the rules about rifles. Is a rifle defined as something with a shoulder stock? And if it has a shoulder stock it has to have a 16" barrel?

Because there are a few things out there like the Kel-Tec PLR-16 with a 9.2" barrel and the Ruger Charger with a 10" barrel which are obviously based on rifles but obviously legal. So does this mean that (with my CCW) it would be legal for me to carry around a PLR-16 if I had some way to conceal it? I would never find it reasonable to do so; I'm just wondering about the law.

But if the Ruger Charger is officially a pistol (just because it doesn't have a stock?) then why does Ruger's site say it isn't legal in CA, CT, HI, MD, MA, NY? Do those states not define it as a pistol? Why?

And why aren't there any 20-gauge pistols? Is it totally illegal because the you can't have a .615 cal (20 gauge) pistol? Is everything over .50 cal illegal? What if I take an 18" 20-gauge and cut it down to 10"? Am I really supposed to have some kind of a permit to have that by my bed? If someone broke into my house and I shot them with a 10" 20-gauge would I get in trouble?

If that's the case, why are shotguns legal at all? There are pistol-grip shotguns with rifled barrels that seem to be legal as long as they have an 18" barrel. What exactly makes them shotguns? Isn't a 12-gauge slug gun with a rifled barrel the same thing as a .729 cal rifle? I'm surprised nobody has managed to make something which is technically a shotgun but fires huge caliber rifle rounds.

Apparently it's legal to use .410 shot in the Taurus Judge with an extremely short barrel. Is that just because it's under .50?
 
Under Federal law, if it's never had a shoulder stock, and was built as a pistol from a virgin receiver, it's a pistol.

CA, CT, HI, MD, MA, and NY are gross violators of their citizens 2nd Amendment rights. You are aware that 5 of the 6 still have the AWB in force at the state level, right?

The Taurus Judge has a rifled barrel.

All of these questions have been answered here before.

Code: 
 your search query here site:thehighroad.org
in your Google search box will get you results from this site.
 
I'm really just guessing here, but I think that one of the ideas behind the CT AWB was to prohibit guns fired from the hip. The Connecticut AWB prohibits semi-automatic pistols with various "evil features', one of which is a grip under the barrel which is what eliminates the Charger.
 
Tostada:

All firearms are regulated by both federal and state statutes, and citizens must comply with both.

For example, when the federal assault weapon ban was in place, it regulated certain features of all firearms. (See Wikipedia, for specifics of what constituted an assault weapon) Because federal law trumps state law, no state could allow the sale of these weapons.
However, each state is free to regulate firearms in any way that doesn't conflict with federal law.

My state has a specific definition of what constitutes a "sawed-off shotgun." Listed in the statute is the minimum length of the bbl.

My state also defines a "pistol" and this definition is pretty common: a firearm capable of one handed operation.

Now, I'm just explaining how the laws work together. PLEASE spare me the the rants that they don't make sense. Why? Because they do not make sense as you pointed out in your post.

Here is another example: most people would agree that JHP ammo is superior for self protection in a pistol. The New Jersey state legislature is a bit schizophrenic, and allows low enforcement officers to use them. Only law enforcement officers. When the officer retires, he or she must use FMJ.
The state that I live in has no such requirement.

Bottom line? Know the law in your state, and if you intend to use a weapon for self defense, make absolutely sure that it is legal.

You DO NOT want to be in court after shooting someone finding that you have been sued by the bad guy (or his survivors) because you employed an "illegal" weapon.

Hope that helps,

Dan
 
For CA the Charger is a pistol and it would have to have a mag disconnect and a loaded chamber indicator the size of Utah and pass a drop test. :banghead:
 
CT law definition of "pistol" and "revolver":

Sec. 29-27. "Pistol" and "revolver" defined. The term "pistol" and the term "revolver", as used in sections 29-28 to 29-38, inclusive, mean any firearm having a barrel less than twelve inches in length.

Hey, the man said the laws were not consistent, and did not always make sense.
 
Here is another example: most people would agree that JHP ammo is superior for self protection in a pistol. The New Jersey state legislature is a bit schizophrenic, and allows low enforcement officers to use them. Only law enforcement officers.
Click to expand...

Not schizophrenic, just selfish. They don't want anyone shooting JHP at police officers.
 
Not to Threadjack

but this is in the same vein.

I live in NY which has its own lame state AWB, now it says that if you have two of these features or more your rifle is now an assault rifle which is illegal.

Those listed include
detachable box magazine, grenade laucher, threaded barrel, flash hider, bayonet lug, pistol grip.

Uhh. . . My AR's legal in the state but it has a detachable box magazine and a pistol grip uhh what gives?

Do they not consider the pistol grip on an AR a pistol grip?

The thing that I find really funny is if I find a stripper clip feed rifle with a grenade laucher that would be legal!
 
but this is in the same vein.

I live in NY which has its own lame state AWB, now it says that if you have two of these features or more your rifle is now an assault rifle which is illegal.

Those listed include
detachable box magazine, grenade laucher, threaded barrel, flash hider, bayonet lug, pistol grip.

Uhh. . . My AR's legal in the state but it has a detachable box magazine and a pistol grip uhh what gives?

Do they not consider the pistol grip on an AR a pistol grip?

The thing that I find really funny is if I find a stripper clip feed rifle with a grenade laucher that would be legal!
Click to expand...

So a K31 is an illegal assault weapon according to the New York law? That makes sense. :rolleyes:
 
I'd just like someone to explain the rules about rifles. Is a rifle defined as something with a shoulder stock? And if it has a shoulder stock it has to have a 16" barrel?
Pistols can have shoulder stocks, but they have to be specifically allowed like the browning hi-power. The majority of pistols CANNOT have a shoulder stock unless it carries the SBR designation. A pistol can become a rifle, but a rifle cannot become a pistol. 16" barrel is the minimum length for rifles.

And why aren't there any 20-gauge pistols? Is it totally illegal because the you can't have a .615 cal (20 gauge) pistol? Is everything over .50 cal illegal? What if I take an 18" 20-gauge and cut it down to 10"? Am I really supposed to have some kind of a permit to have that by my bed? If someone broke into my house and I shot them with a 10" 20-gauge would I get in trouble?
There are no shotgun pistols at all. All shotguns must have a 18" barrel and 26" overall length. A shotgun pistol would be AOW designation. To be illegal over .50 caliber the weapon must have rifling and the ability to accept cartridges. Rifled shotguns are the exception. So you can build a 1" bore gun with rifling if its a muzzle loader. If you take an 18" 20 ga and cut the barrel at all you will be in violation of federal law. Yes you are really supposed the have a permit to keep that by your bed. If you shot someone with that and it was unlicensed you will almost undoubtably be in prison for the forseeable future and open yourself up to a civil suit of biblical proportions..

If that's the case, why are shotguns legal at all? There are pistol-grip shotguns with rifled barrels that seem to be legal as long as they have an 18" barrel. What exactly makes them shotguns? Isn't a 12-gauge slug gun with a rifled barrel the same thing as a .729 cal rifle? I'm surprised nobody has managed to make something which is technically a shotgun but fires huge caliber rifle rounds.
Shotguns are legal because they have very limited range, a specific hunting purpose and they are low pressure weapons (comparatively). What makes them shotguns is the federal paper work filled out when the weapon was manufactured. A 12gauge slug gun does not equal a .729 rifle, the slug operates at much much lower pressure. Slug do not have nearly the range of a rifle. Who says no one has made a high pressure shotgun? The 12 gauge from hell fits that bill nicely. Search THR for it, its a beast!.

Apparently it's legal to use .410 shot in the Taurus Judge with an extremely short barrel. Is that just because it's under .50?
There are several reasons. The judge has a rifled barrel, it was designed for a 45lc so it doesn't carry the shotgun designation from the factory. The .410 shotshells are the equivalent of a .357 shotshell or a 9mm shotshell, or a 45 shotshell. Notice the .410 shotshell is listed as a caliber and not as gauge.
 
nalioth:

Yeah, I know The Judge is rifled. So are slug barrels for any shotgun. And you can get a lot of shotguns like the Mossberg 500 Persuader without a shoulder stock. Does that make them pistols and it's OK to cut the barrel down? I've never heard anything to that effect. That's why I was asking about the .50 cal limit on handguns.

I have used the search, and I know there are similar threads, but I can't find anything specifically like this. I see a lot of people talking about getting an "other destructive device" permit to use a sawed-off shotgun, but I'm having trouble finding what exactly the law is that makes a sawed-off shotgun illegal in the first place, or at least what actually makes a shotgun a shotgun. I could go on, but I don't want to totally repeat my initial post.



dan_i_am:

Does your state (which state might that be?) really just define a pistol as a firearm capable of one-handed operation? As we saw in Commando, an M-60 is a pistol when in the hands of Gov. Schwarzenegger. :D



CYANIDEGENOCIDE:

So, weapons that are rifed and accept cartridges can't be over .50 cal unless they are specifically defined as shotguns (in which case they have to have 18" BBL and 26" OAL). But can't somebody make something that accepts 12 or 20-gauge cartridges and call it a pistol instead of a shotgun? If it's not rifled, I don't see where it's breaking any rules. At the very least I would think that somebody would make an extremely low-pressure big-bore non-rifled sabot shooter that took an oddball cartridge which was basically identical to a 12-gauge or 20-gauge, then you would be able to load it with shotgun shells.

If they took The Judge and enlarged it to take a custom .615 cal cartridge, wouldn't you legally be allowed to put 20-gauge shells in it?

Is a shotgun simply defined as anything that takes 10/12/16/20-gauge cartridges? So everything that chambers one of them is a shotgun, and everything that doesn't is not?
 
The only legal short barreled shotguns I can think of are the Lemat revolvers (original and repro) and blunderbusses (probably because of antique status)
 
dvcrsn said:
The only legal short barreled shotguns I can think of are the Lemat revolvers (original and repro)
Click to expand...
Those are considered "antique" or a "reproduction of antique" and are not considered "firearms".

Just like any other cap and ball revolver.

You can cut the barrel of any muzzle loaded black powder shotgun down to as short as you want, legally (under Federal law).
 
more complex than you folks realize

okay here is how it works...........sorta
Anything Smoothbored that uses fixed ammunition must have a minimum 18" barrel and be over 26" overall
this is the 35' NFA and there is no exemption for pre 1899 manufactured guns.
its all about whether the gun in question used fixed ammunition or not. If you take an antique vintage Winchester 97' and saw it off its STILL regulated under the NFA of 35' as an SBS.
now there are very rare exceptions to all this and a few examples are in order:
A number of years back in the 90s the auction house of Butterfield and Butterfield offered Doc Holidays original well documented sawed off Meteor SxS Shotgun. Out of curiousity I managed to speak with former BATF Firearms and Technology Director Owens regarding its status under the NFA. Heres the situation, due to its historical nature coupled with intrinsic value it was not regulated under the act. Similarly certain English Howdah pistols in 12 bore remain outside regulation.
Another exception are the Gyrojet rocket pistols which while having a technical "barrel" lack rifling of any form.
As far as the over .50 being a distructive device language inserted in 68', the key is "Sporting Purpose" of the chambering. For example this is how Clinton turned the Streetsweepers and USAS12 shotguns into Distructive Devices. All it took was a determination that the shotguns were "non sporting" and due to their bores being over 1/2" they became defacto DDs.
Works the other way as well..........if you build a rifle or pistol in say .58 US musket or .577, even .600 so long as the weapon is obviously sporting its not a DD
hope this clears this up a bit
 
Not to get pedantic here, but two important distinctions:

*Short-barreled shotguns and the like are not illegal, they are regulated.

*You do not need a license to own a short-barreled shotgun/rifle or AOW, or even to make one, you just need to register the gun (not yourself) and have a tax-stamp ($5 or $200 as appropriate).


Not to get picky, it just chaps me when people say "silencers are illegal" or "you need a permit to have one of those!" The illegal part is definitely incorrect (at least Federally), and though a tax-stamp bears some vague resemblance to a permit, there is a definite distinction. You don't just become "NFA-owning man", it's more just that "this item has to be federally accounted-for".


"The more you know..." :eek:
 
The Keltec website says the SU-16D9 and SU-16D12 are short-barreled rifles (http://www.kel-tec-cnc.com/su16d.htm) - the barrel length is 9.2" and the gun is 19.9" not-folded, and it can't be fired folded.

But I wonder about the SU-16C (http://www.kel-tec-cnc.com/su16c.htm). It can be fired while folded. The barrel length is 16.0", the folded length is 25.5", and the not-folded length is 35.5". It seems like being able to fire it folded would make it a short-barreled rifle too?
 
It seems like being able to fire it folded would make it a short-barreled rifle too?
Click to expand...

I have read ATF state they measure at a rifle's "maximum possible length" or some wording similar to that.

You might find copies of letters from Tech Branch where they use that term, I can't remember where I saw it now.

If that's true then you'd be OK with it firing while folded as long as it was long enough when fully extended.

Not legal advice blah blah :)
 
Tostada:

It has been a while since I read that part of the statute.

I'll look it up and get back to you.

My state? I'm in a "secure location" with my good friend Dick Cheney. Actually Dick is kind of cranky and he is talking about going dove hunting tomorrow...so it may not be so secure.
 
The key with regards to overall length requirements on rifles is their length when the stock is extended in position to be fired from ones shoulder.
Again examples are in order. The USGI M1A1 paratrooper carbine falls well under the magic 26" with the stock folded as does the standard Uzi carbine among many others. Other examples are the various replicas of buntline revolvers with 16" barrels and detachable shoulder stocks.
Shotguns differ in that the overall length regardless of configuration must always be a minimum of 26", 18"s of which must be barrel.
If barrel length falls under 18" it becomes a "short barreled shotgun". If the barrel is 18" or over but overall length is under the magic 26" it becomes an "any other weapon".
Definitions get truly weird with semi auto 1919 Brownings which in A4 format are neither rifles nor pistols as defined under the NFA or GCAs definitions altho most manufacturers do paper them off as rifles even tho they lack any ability to be fired from the shoulder until fitted with an A6 stock.
 
Since any firearm with less than a 16" barrel . . .

Is piss-poorly inaccurate at 100 yards, it should be considered a pistol, as it currently is by law. Commonsense and ballistic evidence concurr: a .223 Remington (5.56mm) does best, accuracywise, with at least a 20" long barrel. A .243 Winchester does its best work with a 24" barrel. Cutting down these barrel lengths merely mean one will miss one's target most often. Although one can barely miss at 10 yards, these cut-off specials are merely near-useless at any practical range. At 200 Yards, these minus 16" shorty-gems are rediculously inaccurate. Cliffy
 
*Short-barreled shotguns and the like are not illegal, they are regulated.

*You do not need a license to own a short-barreled shotgun/rifle or AOW, or even to make one, you just need to register the gun (not yourself) and have a tax-stamp ($5 or $200 as appropriate).
Click to expand...

So very true. Too many people jump to conclusions...

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So then to build a double or single barrel 10 inch muzzeloader 12 gauge shotgun pistol from scratch on a virgin frame or lock should be ok.

My sporting purpose would be hunting some cottontails in pa., usually close shots on the run.

I already got the word from my local pistol permit division in new york that I am ok to build pistols(rifled) from scratch(virgin receiver) as long as I do not sell them and number and put them on my license
 
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