Legality of building your own gun from scratch?

[Muzzleflash]

Holy. Moley.

I wonder who is big enough to shoot one of those things?

 

[Cortland]

One wonders how the federal government has any authority over firearms in the absence of interstate commerce. Does the ATF make any effort to explain the legal basis of their authority over firearms made wholly within a single state?

 

[TexasVet]

One wonders how the federal government has any authority over firearms in the absence of interstate commerce.

There is a recent 9th Circuit ruling that they DON'T. A man took a parts kit and built a fully automatic firearm by making the reciever himself. The 9th ruled that since the law defines a machine gun as the reciever itself, since he made it entirely on his own, that the other parts, which had been in interstate commerce, had NO effect on his "manufacturing" of a machinegun and he therefore could not be guilty of NFA violations.
The implementation of this ruling is on hold waiting for the .gov to appeal.
There has been at least one other case in which the man built the entire gun from scratch and was cleared on appeal, (also in the 9th, IIRC) but this is the first that rules that one may rebuild a machine gun from a parts kit by making ONLY the rcvr from scratch.
It may be years before this ruling stands if the gov appeals to the Supreme Court, but it is encouraging.
I do NOT have the links handy, but I will look them up tomorrow and try to find them.

 

[Cortland]

The 9th Circuit Court decision has interesting implications. First, look at applicability. Most states which allow machine guns have laws which actually say that all machine guns are illegal, but then make an exception for machine guns registered with the federal government. In these states, this federal ruling will make home-made machineguns legal on a federal level, but they will be illegal on the state level since they cannot be registered (I assume?).

In the minority of machine gun states whose laws make no mention of the NFA or federal registration, this ruling has real meaning. It is interesting that making only the receiver from scratch eliminates the interstate commerce. Ideally this would apply to semi-auto -> auto conversions, too. Oh, well. I guess we'll all just have to be patient -- and remain "catiously optimistic."

 

[hvengel]

The "normal" steel in guns is 4140. Good stuff but it has been around since the very early 1900s so it is not real expensive if you are talking about the quantity needed for a single gun. Barrel blanks are also not real expense as long as you are not getting a match quality one. I have seen rifle barrel blanks for as little as $20 and if you shop around you might find one for even less. This makes the barrel fairly simple. Just turn the outside to the correct diameter, thread it for the receiver and cut the crown.

 

[publius]

Cortland:

here is a link to the 9th decision by Kozinski:

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/9th/0210318p.pdf

That's not the real answer to your original question, though. Regulation of firearms was not done under the interstate commerce clause. At that time, the Constitution had not grown enough to allow that. Instead, it was done under the power to tax, just like cannabis prohibition. That's why the BATF was under the Treasury Dept, not Commerce, at least until we got the Fatherland Security Dept.