GSG5-SD rifle, "legal" silencer loophole?

GSG5-SD rifle BATFE legal issues

GSG5-SDs are .22 rimfire H&K MP5 clones. They are imported from germany with fake silencers to look like the silenced MP5-SD.

The BATFE decided that they made a mistake in allowing them to be imported and sold, because the fake silencer can be easily modified to be made functional. They now classify the fake silencer as a functional device.

They are allowing an amnesty period for the guns silencer, and it has to be sent in to the importer so they can replace it with a new non-functional silencer.

What would stop a person from making their "functional" silencer into a more functional silencer since they already have amnesty?

On a side note, does 922R apply to .22s?

The BATFE decision is putting GSG5 owners in a jam because of the lack of documentation they are releasing on the issue. If you own one of the silencers you are expected to send it through the mail (a felony?) to have it replaced, without any documentation from the BATFE to explain why you are mailing an illegal device without the proper licensing.

They could be purchased legally months ago, but now due to later decision they are illegal to own (or at least the silencers are).

This surprises you why?

A very good example of what happens when you let the enforcement body make the rules they're supposed to be enforcing, and why the Founders envisioned a separation of powers in the beginning.

Anytime NFA34 gets invoked (like now. I'd bet money that 18USC922(r) isn't the only law that applies - you'll find the bulk of NFA34 in 26CFR. GCA68 is far from the only law that bites here!) someone is going to end up on the wrong end of F Troop. Look at what happened in Waco all those years ago - that was over suspected non-payment of a single $200 NFA transfer tax! Eighty-six people burned alive for two hundred dollars, that F Troop wasn't sure they didn't get, and that's even discounting the NFRTR being in the sorry state it's been in for the last forty years or so (it's been on a Rolodex all this time, and disgruntled employees getting the sack have been known to pull a handful of cards out on their way out the door. This is part of the reason for "annual compliance inspections" of SOT FFL holders and of Class 3/Title II owners. And why they're supposed to keep an original of their paperwork available for inspection (if you travel, take a copy. Keep the original in the safe at home.)

Did you know that, throughout most of Europe, it is actually considered rude to go to the range without a suppressor on your firearm? Here, they make suppressors/signature reducers damned near illegal and damned near impossible to get, then try to close ranges down under "Noise Pollution" regs!

NFA34 et sequelae should be redacted in toto, F Troop should be disarmed (at minimum - disbanded would be better!) and we'd all be better off. No government employee not employed by the Department of Defense or Department of Justice should be allowed to go about armed in an official capacity (F Troop answers to the Department of the Treasury - so they're excluded. The US Secret Service is a grey area - their "dignitary protection" function should be moved to DoJ, or the whole Service lifted out of DoT and moved to DoJ.) Any use of force is to be carried out by DoD or DoJ, and justification for this force must be presented prior to the use of such force in order to receive support.

USSS is a strange case - they originally started out as anti-counterfeiting (which is why they're DoT,) but they picked up the protection of executive staff somewhere down the line, probably because DoJ didn't want it. But, I strongly feel that the government's ability to use force should be extremely limited, and the availability of such force should be limited as well (we have Posse Comitatus of 1878 as a restriction on the domestic use of military force against US Citizens, so that's OK. The National Guard, again, is a grey area - they're primarily US/DoD, but they can be mobilised by the Governor of their host state in times of emergency, disaster, or crisis. The Army National Guard and Air Guard are separate units from the Army Reserve and Air Force Reserve, respectively, although they still answer to the Army Chief of Staff and Air Force Chief of Staff, ultimately.) It would make sense to keep anti-counterfeiting enforcement under DoT and shift executive protection over to DoJ, but I'm not sure it could be readily done...

someone touch a nerve there, 5-90?

By the way, I agree, what the f**k do we have tax agents carrying guns for? Or for that matter, Dept. of Education agents?

Prepmech: the point of ATFs "rule of the week" is to make overly complex, easily breakable rules to pump up their arrest/conviction rates.

5-90: Weren't you paying attention during Waco? It wern't just the two hunert dollar. Why, them wackos in Waco were also suspected of child abuse(BATF said so!). They burned them to stop them being abused!

tbburg said:

By the way, I agree, what the f**k do we have tax agents carrying guns for? Or for that matter, Dept. of Education agents?

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...or Postal Inspectors.

A while back I looked it up, the feds have over 85 armed law enforcement groups/agencies/cluster*ucks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_law_enforcement_in_the_United_States
thats not the complete list, I don't remember where I tracked it down to but it's a start.

tbburg said:

someone touch a nerve there, 5-90?

By the way, I agree, what the f**k do we have tax agents carrying guns for? Or for that matter, Dept. of Education agents?

Prepmech: the point of ATFs "rule of the week" is to make overly complex, easily breakable rules to pump up their arrest/conviction rates.

5-90: Weren't you paying attention during Waco? It wern't just the two hunert dollar. Why, them wackos in Waco were also suspected of child abuse(BATF said so!). They burned them to stop them being abused!

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F Troop always hits a sore spot.

And pay attention to the sequence of events - the allegations of child molestation didn't come about until F Troop screwed the pooch the first time, and that was to get the FBI and TNG involved (TNG wouldn't loan out any helos without more serious charges - like drugs or child molestation, or something similar. Those charges didn't come up at the beginning - the only charge at the beginning was the suspected non-payment of the NFA transfer tax.)

Ruby Ridge wasn't a high point in the history of F Troop either - they kept accusing Randy Weaver of being a white supremacist (he wasn't - merely a white separatist,) shot Sammy Weaver in the back, shot Vicki Weaver in the face (with the door in one hand and an infant in the other - how was she a threat?) killed Kevin Harris, and I think Randy Weaver's older daughter as well. Yes, it was an FBI sniper (Lon Horiuchi) that pulled the trigger, but the RoEs were set by F Troop, and the jury is still out on whether or not the shotgun that they said Weaver sold had been cut down after sale to an F Troop informant or not.

Primarily because F Troop wanted Weaver to infiltrate Aryan Nations Congress, and Weaver told F Troop to get bent. So, the whole incident and the NFA tax was probably to "put the arm" on him.

Leaving aside that the core of these cases - NFA34 - has a specious history itself. Look it up sometime, and pay particular attention to the first cases under NFA (US v. Miller, 1936 or so.)

All because we rescinded Prohibition, and they didn't want to cut the "Revenooers" loose and have them go do something productive for a living. The old Prohibition Agents were the first BATMen, although they worked for the IRS (AFT didn't exist as a department until 1972, or thereabouts. And they were already out of control then.)

Ruby ridge: You left out that in the end,(something like 3- or 4 years later, after spending the whole time in jail) Weaver was found innocent of the original charge. And I believe, of all the subsequent charges, which included the killing of a federal marshal.
...and didn't they put the guy('wanna say he was FBI HRT) who shot Vickie Weaver in the witness protection program?

Waco: Been to long, no clear memory, but if I remember right, they claimed illegal drug manufacturing/sales, to get the TNG involved. The whole "child abuse" angle was mainly fed to the press to drum up support and sympathy for themselves after they botched the initial raid.
Then there was the refusal to allow independent forensic examination of the weapons recovered after the fire to see if any of them were actually NFA weapons.

On a slightly more "on topic" note:
How come this hasn't been declared an NFA item?

tbburg said:

Ruby ridge: You left out that in the end,(something like 3- or 4 years later, after spending the whole time in jail) Weaver was found innocent of the original charge. And I believe, of all the subsequent charges, which included the killing of a federal marshal.
...and didn't they put the guy('wanna say he was FBI HRT) who shot Vickie Weaver in the witness protection program?

Waco: Been to long, no clear memory, but if I remember right, they claimed illegal drug manufacturing/sales, to get the TNG involved. The whole "child abuse" angle was mainly fed to the press to drum up support and sympathy for themselves after they botched the initial raid.
Then there was the refusal to allow independent forensic examination of the weapons recovered after the fire to see if any of them were actually NFA weapons.

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Weaver was exonerated? Good. If he was exonerated of the initial charge (which shoud have happened - it was specious as it was,) then the subsequent events aren't his responsibility - they all followed the initial charge. Ergo, they would be (logically) dismissed as well.

And, I'd never heard that Horiuchi made it into Witless Protection - got a source for that?

As far as the last point, I did say that the unpaid 4200 NFA tas was "suspected," did I not? There was no proof that they should have paid it in the first place - but the NFRTR has been a joke since inception, and it got worse after 19MAY1986...

tbburg said:

On a slightly more "on topic" note:
How come this hasn't been declared an NFA item?

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Gamo? Probably because it's an airgun, and therefore not a "firearm" under legal definition.

I've got two Barrels of America "suppressed" barrels for paintball markers - one for my VM-68, one for my Trracer. I bought them just before BOA quit making them - seems the ATF was "on-again/off-again" on whether they could be used as firearm suppressors, and BOA just got tired of playing the game (it's stupid to allow the agency that enforces the rules to rewrite them at will.)

The whole "supressor" argument is stupid - after all, two-litre plastic bottles and duct tape are still legal, and you can make a disposable low-power rifle suppressor using them. If F Troop decided to get shirty, they could start raiding exhaust shops - making a suppressor using fender washers and muffler tubing is simplicity itself. And hope you don't have any sheet rubber lying about with some steel tubing - ever hear of a "wipe-design suppressor?"

Firearms are more heavily regulated than pharmaceuticals or medical devices, the rules change more often, and they're quite capriciously enforced. The only other agency I can think of where you ask three people the same question and get five different answers is the IRS (literally! I've been through Hell and high water trying to get a straight answer out of the IRS a few times, and it's enough to drive ya ta drinkin'!)

Gimme half a chance - F Troop and IRS would be the first government bureaus I would dissolve and put them back into finding productive work (because what they're doing now damn sure isn't productive!)

5-90 said:

Weaver was exonerated? Good.

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Not only that, but in the end, he turned around, sued the feds for wrongful death(of his wife)and they gave him a three mil. settlement before it went to trial.

5-90 said:

And, I'd never heard that Horiuchi made it into Witless Protection - got a source for that?

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Nope, no source, I'm depending on my limited memory,.. I'll see if I can find something.

By the way, the "weren't you paying attention,...." remark was supposed to be heavy sarcasm.

Actually, as my memory serves--not always good--the Judge at Weaver's trial threw out the sawed-off shotgun charge as laughable, but Weaver was sentenced for NOT SHOWING UP FOR TRIAL when he was supposed to. That is how I remember reading it in Gerry Spence's book.

I bought a .22 caliber bolt action rifle in Paris when stationed there at the embassy--with a silencer, and ZERO paperwork. When packing to rotate back stateside I checked with the U.S. Customs at the embassy--they said no the silencer (I knew that) and they told me I would likely catch crap because the barrel was made for mounting the silencer (didn't know that), so I gave it to a friend instead of trying to carry it back or shipping it and having my stuff hung up in customs.

Also--the way F troop functions is beyond me. You can own an M1 Carbine, you can own ALL of the parts that make an M2 Carbine full auto--just don't install any of them and you are Ok. However, the mere possession of an auto sear for an AR-15, even if you don't own an AR-15 or any of the other parts necessary for the auto sear to function--well, THAT is a crime as the auto sear is considered a machine gun by itself. Go figure.

The original warrant/charge was for manufacturing/transferring a short barreled shotgun without the proper tax stamp. The fiasco that followed was because of a warrant for failure to appear.('not getting into all the ways that was screwed up) 'Could have been solved by a uniformed deputy walking up and knocking on the door.
When they got around to a trial, the whole "failure to appear" thing? Well, it was kind of forgotten about.
Interestingly, the "short barreled shotgun" charge wasn't because the barrel was too short. The barrel length was OK, it was the overall length of the gun. The stock had been shortened.

tbburg said:

Interestingly, the "short barreled shotgun" charge wasn't because the barrel was too short. The barrel length was OK, it was the overall length of the gun. The stock had been shortened.

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Please show your work.

5-90 said:

Gamo? Probably because it's an airgun, and therefore not a "firearm" under legal definition.

I've got two Barrels of America "suppressed" barrels for paintball markers - one for my VM-68, one for my Trracer. I bought them just before BOA quit making them - seems the ATF was "on-again/off-again" on whether they could be used as firearm suppressors, and BOA just got tired of playing the game (it's stupid to allow the agency that enforces the rules to rewrite them at will.)

The whole "supressor" argument is stupid - after all, two-litre plastic bottles and duct tape are still legal, and you can make a disposable low-power rifle suppressor using them. If F Troop decided to get shirty, they could start raiding exhaust shops - making a suppressor using fender washers and muffler tubing is simplicity itself. And hope you don't have any sheet rubber lying about with some steel tubing - ever hear of a "wipe-design suppressor?"

Firearms are more heavily regulated than pharmaceuticals or medical devices, the rules change more often, and they're quite capriciously enforced. The only other agency I can think of where you ask three people the same question and get five different answers is the IRS (literally! I've been through Hell and high water trying to get a straight answer out of the IRS a few times, and it's enough to drive ya ta drinkin'!)

Gimme half a chance - F Troop and IRS would be the first government bureaus I would dissolve and put them back into finding productive work (because what they're doing now damn sure isn't productive!)

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For many years air guns were outlawed in Europe, they were the preferred choice of weapon for assassinations. A friend of mine had a single shot 5mm of some kind [way back in 64] pretty exotic, looked like a Schuetzen rifle, single shot, thing would go through a 2x4 at a 100 yards, depended on how many times you pumped the barrel by folding it along the stock like the break action it was, heavy octagon barrel, hooked stock, it had a kick too.

ECKSJAY said:

Please show your work.

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Wasn't work, it was memory(mine). 'Don't remember where I originally read the info. As it was over 15 years ago, and the original incident was almost 20 years ago, my apologies if things are a little hazy now.
I dug around a little(cursory search) and came up with 3 different answers.

1 - Two shotguns with barrels aprox. 1/4" below legal minimum. This would be 17 3/4" barrel, regardless of overall length.
2 - Two shotguns with "overall length of the guns shorter than the legal limit set by federal law". That would be overall length less then 26", regardless of barrel length.
3 - Two shotguns, with barrels in the 13'-15". In other words, real "short barreled shotguns".

A possibility is that both 1 and 2 above are correct: the weapons could have been 25 3/4" long, with a barrel length of 17 3/4". That would give them both short barrels and a "too short" overall length.
I did not find a record of the original complaint, sworn statements, or a trial transcript(I didn't spend a huge amount of time looking, but they're probably out there somewhere,..) however, based on the fact that Weaver didn't get convicted on the short barreled shotgun charge, I'd say it couldn't be the "13-15 inch" version. While a Jury might cut some slack on 1/4" off one end or the other, "somewhere around 1/4-1/2 foot" probably wouldn't fly.

I seem to remember there was an issue the way that F troop measured them that got pretty heated, from the judge no less. I had the feeling at the time the 3 judges that they. feds, tried to use were not team players.

5-90 said:

Gamo? Probably because it's an airgun, and therefore not a "firearm" under legal definition.

The whole "supressor" argument is stupid - after all, two-litre plastic bottles and duct tape are still legal, and you can make a disposable low-power rifle suppressor using them. If F Troop decided to get shirty, they could start raiding exhaust shops - making a suppressor using fender washers and muffler tubing is simplicity itself. And hope you don't have any sheet rubber lying about with some steel tubing - ever hear of a "wipe-design suppressor?"

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Always wanted to know how these worked and how they were made on the fly....

5-90 said:

Firearms are more heavily regulated than pharmaceuticals or medical devices, the rules change more often, and they're quite capriciously enforced. The only other agency I can think of where you ask three people the same question and get five different answers is the IRS (literally! I've been through Hell and high water trying to get a straight answer out of the IRS a few times, and it's enough to drive ya ta drinkin'!)

Gimme half a chance - F Troop and IRS would be the first government bureaus I would dissolve and put them back into finding productive work (because what they're doing now damn sure isn't productive!)

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LOL! So true!