Rifling Question

[osan]

I've looked for this elsewhere but see no references, so here I am...

Legally speaking, is there a requirement that a rifled shotgun barrel's rifling have actual twist, and if so, it there a minimum rate? IOW, can I legally have a rifled barrel where the rifling is straight or so close to it that it is effectively so?

The thought behind this has to do with categorizing a weapon as a rifle, rather than a shotgun, thus allowing a 16" minimum bbl length. After all, weapons like a Judge has a short, rifled barrel yet do not qualify as short barreled shotguns even though they chamber shotgun rounds.

 

[entropy]

Look up the term "sporting purposes" in the ATF glossary.

 

[PapaG]

Hastings and others have made straight rifled shotgun barrels to supposedly keep wads and shot together and reduce spread. Wadlock was one name. They were still shotgun barrels, however. Walter Craig of Selma, AL, contracted some cheap Brazilian shotguns to be made with pistol grips, conventional shaped rifling which was actually faint scratches to take advantage of the success TC had with their Contender ATF put a stop to that and even shut TCs production of the 45/410 for a while.
There isn't much hope to sneak something by them for long. Straight or rotating rifling, a shotgun is a shotgun. My Savage 220 would be a SBS if I cut it shorter than 18".
Heck, the 22s we reamed out back in the fifties for bird shot and cut to 16" were technically illegal. Long gone now.

 

[Jim Watson]

There was also the Reformation, an AR with straight rifling that Franklin Armory got listed as a 'firearm' kind of like those 14" scatterguns. Wonder what it is now.

Still in their catalog with all pertinent bafflegab.

 

[osan]

There was also the Reformation, an AR with straight rifling that Franklin Armory got listed as a 'firearm' kind of like those 14" scatterguns. Wonder what it is now.

Still in their catalog with all pertinent bafflegab.

Funny you mention this. I found it shortly after posting... figures, of course. Anyhow, ATF once again put their arbitrary kybosh on the straight rifling idea, the vermin, so that does that. But it doesn't settle the question of whether there is a minimum twist rate, so far as I know. However, given ATF's well demonstrated patterns of mangling statutes through their wild misinterpretations, I can readily see that they would come up with some nonsense like "effective twist rate" such that were I to produce a barrel with, say, a 1 in 100 rate, they would call it "effectively straight", which we all know would be nonsense, but they don't seem to care a whole lot about reason, save that they can maim it to suit their whims.

Anyhow, thanks everyone for the help. Finally found what I sought.