It's all about the "sporting purpose" BS. While the BATF looks at magazine capacity, simply running a reduced capacity magazine in a rifle so identified does not exempt it from 922r. Modding a Saiga sporter to accept AK mags also does not make it identical to a rifle listed as having no sporting purposes. Browning BARs are made overseas. Does modifying it to take a pistol grip and a detachable 20 mag subject it to 922r? If not, why would modding the Saiga just to take an AK mag subject to 922r?
BATF response to use of hi-cap magazines in Saiga Sporters
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It's all about the "sporting purpose" BS. While the BATF looks at magazine capacity, simply running a reduced capacity magazine in a rifle so identified does not exempt it from 922r. Modding a Saiga sporter to accept AK mags also does not make it identical to a rifle listed as having no sporting purposes. Browning BARs are made overseas. Does modifying it to take a pistol grip and a detachable 20 mag subject it to 922r? If not, why would modding the Saiga just to take an AK mag subject to 922r?
OP
OP
BSA1
member
I am not a layperson. I am a retired government bureaucrat and proud of the service
Have you been to law school, are you a lawyer, are you a judge? If not you are a lay person when it comes to interpreting the law. That is not a term of derision it is a fact.
A layperson or layman is a person who is not an expert in a given field of knowledge.
Within the context of that definition I can accept being called a layperson as well as yourself since you refuse to post your legal and educational credentials. However after 23 years of serice as a Government employee I will argue my expertise in understanding and explaining on Government Regulatory Agencies function.
If you can't figure out that violation of 922r is a criminal act I'm very skeptical of what every else you might think you have figured out about it.
This is not about a criminal case. It is about Again it doesn't matter when a bureaucary is developing policies and procedures for enforcing laws. As a bureaucrat I was shielded from criminal charges as long as I was following
Have you been to law school, are you a lawyer, are you a judge? If not you are a lay person when it comes to interpreting the law. That is not a term of derision it is a fact.
A layperson or layman is a person who is not an expert in a given field of knowledge.
Within the context of that definition I can accept being called a layperson as well as yourself since you refuse to post your legal and educational credentials. However after 23 years of serice as a Government employee I will argue my expertise in understanding and explaining on Government Regulatory Agencies function.
If you can't figure out that violation of 922r is a criminal act I'm very skeptical of what every else you might think you have figured out about it.
This is not about a criminal case. It is about Again it doesn't matter when a bureaucary is developing policies and procedures for enforcing laws. As a bureaucrat I was shielded from criminal charges as long as I was following
meanmrmustard
Member
One must also remember that, to the law, sporting means hunting. Either term is subjective, as some folks I know paper punch with bolt rifles, and hunt with SKSs and ARs.
I only bring this up as anytime I've read reports or documents made trying to change past or present gun laws, the hunting thing comes up alot, especially when mag capacity is on the menu.
OP
OP
BSA1
member
Girodin,
I want to apologize for the harsh tone of my replies to you. I got a little carried away in the discussion.
I think we share the common goal of trying to understand 922r and avoid getting into trouble. I think the difference is we are at different stages of the debate. I am still at the beginning trying to find out what the BATF's policy is. As a retired bureaucrat that is easier for me to understand. I think you are further along the process than me by assuming a violation has occurred and we are in criminal court. This may be easier for you to related to than the disfunctional world of bureaucaries.
Anyway I did not mean to attack your position and opinions. Maybe one of those trees in the forest hit me in the head.
And I look forward to your opinion about the BATF's position if I can get them to put it in writing.
I want to apologize for the harsh tone of my replies to you. I got a little carried away in the discussion.
I think we share the common goal of trying to understand 922r and avoid getting into trouble. I think the difference is we are at different stages of the debate. I am still at the beginning trying to find out what the BATF's policy is. As a retired bureaucrat that is easier for me to understand. I think you are further along the process than me by assuming a violation has occurred and we are in criminal court. This may be easier for you to related to than the disfunctional world of bureaucaries.
Anyway I did not mean to attack your position and opinions. Maybe one of those trees in the forest hit me in the head.
And I look forward to your opinion about the BATF's position if I can get them to put it in writing.
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Wow, really? How is that off topic? Do you understand that the sporting purpose test is what triggers the applicability of 922r? Your original question was does doing X to a saiga violate 922r. That question CANNOT be answered without first answering whether X makes the saiga now fail the sporting purposes test. That is the first, and an incredibly crucial, question to be answered. It is at the very heart of your original question. The lynch pin to the whole rest of the discussion is what modifications make a stock saiga, which was approved by the secretary as "sporting" no longer sporting. It is only then that you have to even worry about 922(r). This is not off topic. This is THE topic.
Over the years I have read a lot about 922(r) and the other statutes and regulations that inform it. I have read, and thought, a lot about how it applies to saiga rifles and shotguns, I own a number of each. The best I can find is that the ATF has no official position on what makes those guns no longer sporting. We have things that give us good guidance, I wont bother to go through them again (what is allowed to be imported, the ATF studies, ATF letters). Here is a link to further reading on sporting vs non sporting http://gunwiki.net/Gunwiki/LegalFederal922rFeatures
However, threads like this seem to miss the forest for the trees. You can seek guidance from the ATF today, but how meaningful is it? Particularly a phone call. Over the years the ATF has changed their opinion, which they of course are free to do, many times on 922(r) issues. There are contradictory letters concerning whether an SBR is subject to 922(r). Non of these letters are the law, rather they are an opinion about what the law is. When it comes to saigas the ATF doesn't seem to even be sure of how many countable parts a saiga has. For a long time people thought it was 14 parts for a saiga shotgun. There were ATF letters saying the thread protector was not a muzzle attachment. There are letters stating it is. There has been various other discrepancies in what they count, notably the puck/op rod. Here is a letter stating 15 for the parts count after earlier letters made people believe for years the count was only 14. http://gunwiki.net/pub/JustTheLaw/RefSaigaATF/batfe-atf-letter-saiga-12-parts-10-13-2011.pdf As an aside Code of Federal Regulations Title 27, Volume 1, Section 178.39 doesn't list a muzzle device as a countable part but rather a muzzle attachment. Perhaps, a sign of how thorough ATF is being in researching and answering these letters. They could decide tomorrow that just because its attached to another part doesn't mean the saiga doesn't have a sear and the count changes again.
I could get a letter tomorrow issuing guidance but it is not a statement of law and other people would be beyond foolish to treat it as such. And, as history has shown, the guidance can change dramatically. As such, debating the minutia is perhaps entertaining and informative, but otherwise kind of silly. I've enjoyed this thread because it has given me occasion to go back and re-read the code sections, the regulations, the ATF studies on sporting purpose, a number of the letters floating around out there and to rethink all the issues. At the end of the day we still don't know, and wont until official action is taken, the answer to many of the important questions. I still believe the easiest and surest course of action is to construe each gray area against yourself and make sure you are compliant that way. Doing so is easy and relatively very inexpensive. This thread has already covered how one could do that and be able to use 30 round mags without performing a pistol grip conversion. If your intent is, as you state, to avoid legal prosecution that is the obvious answer and the most certain route.
Why thank you. However, I have read many more thorough, scholarly, and well, frankly, better, articles than yahoo news on the matter when I was graduating Magna cum laude from a top tier law school, while I worked at firm that among other things took on federal criminal defense cases, while I worked at the prosecutors office, and even while doing the private sector work I now do.
How is it not about a criminal case. I suppose its not about any currently existing case and what you are trying to say is it is a discussion of what one ATF agent said. However to talk about 922r and ignore how it would play out in a criminal case is kind of silly. At the end of the day that is really all that matters isn't it? It is a criminal statute! If it is enforced it will be in a criminal court. This will not be a civil matter handled before an ALJ and pursued by the agency. Separation of powers being what it is, if there are 922r charges it will be the US attorneys office prosecuting you in federal court. At which point, again because of separation of powers, what the agency opined about what they thought 922r meant is not going to be per se accepted. I would go into the different types of deference and when they apply, but if the above in this thread is too difficult to grasp, and if you think 922r is off topic, then I would just be wasting my breath. More over there have been no official positions on many of the most important legal question that would come up. Since there has been no formal or informal rule makings on these matters we are more or less left only with what the statute and existing regulations say. As such the questions I have identified are what is going to have to be hashed out. Doing so would be long and expensive, irrespective of the out come.
I'll just take a moment to point out that state administrative agency law does not forcibly line up one to one with its federal counterpart. Also, in my experience, different agencies operate very differently. Not only do they have different organic statutes that affect it, the just have different cultures.
I actually don't think I did. I said it was curious given the wording of the status and regulations and previous positions on sporting purpose. I also said I would be interested to see the written response. I also explained why the answer they gave seems to be at odds with both the law as written and conventional understandings of it. Who am I to reject it? If anything you will notice my typical answer has been to state the arguments that exist, in essence to outline the debate, but to conclude by saying we just don't know the answer because there is nothing definitive (ATF letters are not) on any of these issues. If there was they wouldn't be issues and we could link to the code, regulation, or case law and be done with it. That is why typically people answer these questions by giving the safest course of action. However, when we dig deeper we see that it may not be necessary and there is a lot of fuzzy lines and gray area and things that are frankly difficult to reconcile. This can make for a discussion that is confusing to folks who just want to be sure they are on the right side of the law without worrying about the technicalities.
By the way I never refused you never asked for them in this thread. Even in the other thread you asked an ambiguous question and I asked for clarification on what you were asking. I've not visited that thread so I don't know if you subsequently asked. As I stated earlier what I am saying doesn't turn on the papers I have on my wall or the fancy latin phrases on them. That is why I've tried to link to the sources to allow people to read and understand the issues themselves.
*EDIT: BTW I just checked the other thread and you never clarified what it was you were asking about in that thread either. If you want to know my education you need not goad me with taunts that I refuse to answer a question that was never clearly asked (or perhaps that was an attempt to discredit my statements?). You could simply ask directly.
Oh enough. Take it to pm if you feel the need to bicker but this is finished.
meanmrmustard
Member
I'm dizzy with attempted legal jargon.
Did the OP chime back in as to a solution to this issue?
Did the OP chime back in as to a solution to this issue?
What is going on? It seems that a lot of threads (especially ones about foreign rifles... I.E. 922r) that start out with a simple question turn into an unneeded, off-topic debate about legalities and court cases. Can we please get a 922r tutorial thread/section up and running to avoid this nonsense?
If the current trend keeps going, everyone that posts a question about an AK (for example) will have to deal with three pages about how some guys from upstate Missouri went to jail for using an AK in self defense.... or how it's much more politically correct to use a shotgun that was produced in 1950 for home defense. It's rather annoying. I know.... the poindexters are trying to help. I wonder if half of these guys ever touched a firearm.
If the current trend keeps going, everyone that posts a question about an AK (for example) will have to deal with three pages about how some guys from upstate Missouri went to jail for using an AK in self defense.... or how it's much more politically correct to use a shotgun that was produced in 1950 for home defense. It's rather annoying. I know.... the poindexters are trying to help. I wonder if half of these guys ever touched a firearm.
Well 922(r) is a law. To answer a question about the law one typically needs to turn to statutes, regulations, and the court cases interpreting them. With respect to many topics, including 922r there are many undecided issues and thus some room for debate. As I stated earlier, some of the questions no one knows the answer to and that is what precludes an easy answer.
This website (and those it links to) is a pretty good primer though and will help most folks accomplish what they need to. http://gunwiki.net/Gunwiki/LegalFederal922rParts
Very highroad.
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