Full auto ownership

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Americanmade

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Im sure you guys have seen this a thousand times before but what are the steps to proceed on owning a full auto firearm.
 
1. Find the fa you want.
2. Spend anywhere from 3k to 80k and up depending on what it is.
3.have it transferred to an ffl with sot
4. Send form 4 and 200 bucks to atf and forget about it for 6-8 months
5. When it comes back and you pick it up, immediately notify state police that you are taking possession of it.

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5. When it comes back and you pick it up, immediately notify state police that you are taking possession of it.
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It's not always necessary to notify the police depending on your state's laws. Other than that, steps 1-4 are exactly right.

The main hassle in transferring any NFA toy is the wait. The price is a pretty big annoyance as well, but that only really affects machine guns. As far as the background check, if you can possess a pistol you can possess a machine gun. The big factor with the price of machine guns is that the registry was closed in 1986, so the supply is frozen. With a small supply and growing demand over the past 25 years, prices have risen to the point that a relatively cheap full auto now costs about $3,000 used.
 
Yeppers, some states don't give a rip, provided the feds are all set.
 
You can have about 95% of the fun with a semiautomatic clone -- with no wait, no $200 stamp, at a fraction of the cost. Remember, with an FA you are paying mostly for the registration papers, and not for the gun itself. If the registry is ever reopened, you would stand to lose a good portion of your "investment."
 
Not entirely true, the Browning BAR for example, not many people would want a 18 lb 30-06 machine gun that feeds from a 20 round box mag. Even manufacturers would most likely not "tool up" to make this gun again, for the simple face that it is a slow, heavy, long machine gun. Most people wanting machine guns want the 10/22, Glock, MP5 or M16, some of the older machine guns would maintain much of their value original MG42, Bren guns, Vickers, West Hurley Thompsons, Sten guns, even some of the old M60's would maintain their value. Some 07/SOTs would make them but a hand built PPSh would still cost several thousand dollars, parts kits would cost as much as the guns.
 
Add this: If the gun is located in your state, you don't need to involve a SOT. Buy it directly from the seller.
 
You can have about 95% of the fun with a semiautomatic clone -- with no wait, no $200 stamp, at a fraction of the cost.
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True, but the value of those semi's goes down , where almost every FA out there has went up ( some majorly up ) year after year.

ammended steps:
1. Live in a free state that allows you to own NFA items.
2. Find the fa you want.
3. Spend anywhere from 3k to 80k and up depending on what it is.
4.have it transferred to an ffl with sot
5. Send form 4 and 200 bucks to atf and forget about it for 6-8 months
6. Buy LOTS of ammo

another good thing to invest in is aspirin, you see, when you shoot FA stuff, you end up smiling too much and it makes your eyes squint and you get headaches ;)
 
No, first step is
'get comfortable with being poor and spending more money on ammo for a day out than most people spend on guns per a year.'

remember at 2-300 per 1K and a cyclic rate of 800 RPM, that's over $250 a minute to operate.
 
Most FA shooters don't do full dumps with each pull of the trigger. Most of them actually prefer shooting at targets.

Once you LEARN to control the trigger, you can manage your ammo bill.

With the UZI I can get single shots at will , same with the MG08 , Tommy and many others. Even the very fastest of the FA's you can keep at 3-5 rounds per burst if you do your part.
 
Yes, I understand that, but your range sessions are measured in the hundreds or thousands of rounds, compared to the tens of rounds, that was my point, you shoot more ammo with a FA.
 
I have a bunch of FA guns but I never shoot them. Zero ammunition bill. (The point being that everybody's experience is different.)

BTW, one of the major annoyances, to me, in going to Knob Creek is all the noise and dust emanating from the range. I go there strictly for the FA gun show.
 
You can have about 95% of the fun with a semiautomatic clone
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Let me guess, you don't have any do you? Everyone that has ever shot one at our farm would give more than +5% fun factor.
 
Let me guess, you don't have any do you? Everyone that has ever shot one at our farm would give more than +5% fun factor.
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my guess is he doesn't , but is one of those that think the registry will open again some day.
 
my guess is he doesn't , but is one of those that think the registry will open again some day.
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Read my post #13. I used to be a Class III SOT, and I have some former inventory guns I got to keep after that endeavor, plus some that I bought tax-paid. Needless to say none of these cost me anything like today's going prices.

I would not pay today's going prices for machine guns. (Perhaps because I already have what I have. If I was a newbie maybe that would be different.)

When you consider the high prices for full autos, plus the long wait for transfer approval, plus the need to trust someone with your money for that long period, semiauto clones become more and more attractive. For example, you can have a nice OOW semiauto BAR for about 10% of what a FA one would cost. The semiauto BAR, firing from a closed bolt, is actually way more accurate than the FA BAR.

I don't know if the registry will reopen some day. I hope that it does, and I think that given enough time, that's a distinct possibility.
 
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I always wanted one of the 10/22 FA receivers or conversion trigger groups, but even them, if you can find one, run you in the thousands.
 
Select fire 22lr would be worth the wait. Uzi? Maybe. Too bad a SBR Uzi requires a wait too. BAR - ouch! Need a HELOC to feed one of those even if you handload.
 
there was a post not long ago by a guy in Czech republic? of a Croatian .22 rifle, fed from a pan mag, FA, said he loved it, neat little gun, and not that expensive, just wish we could get some too....
 
I currently have 4 stamps and am awaiting approval on the 5th. Except for my suppressor, step 1 for me was convincing the wife. Step 2 was saving the money.
 
the easiest way is to just go talk to you class 3 dealer, they will usually help you each step of the way. Locate the gun you want then go talk to your local class 3 dealer. The hardest part is the waiting times involved
 
AlexanderA said:
You can have about 95% of the fun with a semiautomatic clone -- with no wait, no $200 stamp, at a fraction of the cost. Remember, with an FA you are paying mostly for the registration papers, and not for the gun itself. If the registry is ever reopened, you would stand to lose a good portion of your "investment."
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Not only that, from what I understand the 1986 was well anticipated by licensed traders and many, many thousands of fully automatic firearms that exist in paper only that could now be built-up and sold at any time.
 
Not only that, from what I understand the 1986 was well anticipated by licensed traders and many, many thousands of fully automatic firearms that exist in paper only that could now be built-up and sold at any time.
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It's true that manufacturers worked overtime, in the month between congressional passage and the date Reagan signed it, to "paper" as many guns as they could. But the process of manufacture had to reach a certain stage of completion, or else the "papering" would be declared invalid. The ATF checked the manufacturers, and disallowed many such registrations.

In any case, the incomplete guns have long since been completed. There is no "reservoir" of papered guns waiting to be manufactured.

As a side note, most of the hastily papered guns were things like MAC flats and Sten tubes -- in other words the low end of the market.
 
AlexanderA said:
It's true that manufacturers worked overtime, in the month between congressional passage and the date Reagan signed it, to "paper" as many guns as they could. But the process of manufacture had to reach a certain stage of completion, or else the "papering" would be declared invalid. The ATF checked the manufacturers, and disallowed many such registrations.

In any case, the incomplete guns have long since been completed. There is no "reservoir" of papered guns waiting to be manufactured.

As a side note, most of the hastily papered guns were things like MAC flats and Sten tubes -- in other words the low end of the market.
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"In any case, the incomplete guns have long since been completed. There is no "reservoir" of papered guns waiting to be manufactured."

That's simply not true. No way did the BATF inspect every completed gun/stripped receiver/lightning link. Not even close. And the anticipation was far more than a month.

Let me say it in these terms. If a federal law was coming that would permanently preclude the transfer of fully auto weapons to private individuals who were not specially licensed, a TON of fully auto "guns" would show-up on the market. The effective supply would explode in size. The demand might too...
 
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