What makes short barrels "evil"?

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What gets me is, even though most people will openly complain about firearms laws in other countries, many of those other countries will allow SBR's without the TAX hassles here in the USA
 
geronimotwo, part of the definition of a shotgun under the NFA is that it has a smooth bore, whereas pistols and rifles have a rifled bore. Therefore you can have a pistol that happens to be able to chamber and safely fire shotshells (like that Taurus revolver which can use .45 Colt and .410) but it must have a rifled bore. Smoothbore muzzle-loading pistols aren't short-barrel shotguns under the NFA because it defines a firearm as firing fixed ammunition (i.e. unitary cartridges).
 
As other posters have pointed out, this is an artifact of early versions of NFA '34.

Originally, handguns were going to be classified alongside machine guns, and all the SBS/SBR language was intended to prevent the creation of a hand gun from long gun parts.

There's also a bit of classism and racism involved: basic long guns have always been cheaper than basic handguns, and so the possible sources of handguns for the poor amounted to cutting down a long gun, or resorting to a "{blank}-town Saturday night special."
 
Don't you guys know? A rifle with a 15" barrel is much much more lethal than a 16" barrel. Hell, whack of another inch and you essentially have an Abrams in your hands.

Look, it must be a limit for a reason right? The anti gunners are never wrong with this stuff.
 
Another interesting point to consider is that you can have a SBR without having to register it. It simply cannot have a butt-stock (an AK pistol for instance). So, in essence, the law forces the unregistered SBR (classified as a handgun) to be even more concealable.
 
I was under the impression that the NFA of 1934 used the few high powered gangsters an excuse but was largely motivated out of the governments fear of an armed version of the pension march.
 
Wow I cant beleive no one has picked up on this yet. Any way it has more to do with the violence caused by prohibition than any thing else. Gangsters were cutting down rifles shotguns and machine guns of all sorts to conceal them better to do their dirty work.
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Prohibition was repealed in 1933, a year before the NFA act. What there WAS, however, was a whole lot of "revenue agents" (like the Untouchables, the beginning of what is now the BATF) who now had nothing to do. The gov't doesn't like to fire people even if they are no longer useful...so they were given something else to enforce. That's my take on it anyway.
 
I was under the impression that the NFA of 1934 used the few high powered gangsters an excuse but was largely motivated out of the governments fear of an armed version of the pension march.
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Do you have a source on that? My dark, cynical side says that sounds extremely likely.
 
geronimotwo, part of the definition of a shotgun under the NFA is that it has a smooth bore, whereas pistols and rifles have a rifled bore. Therefore you can have a pistol that happens to be able to chamber and safely fire shotshells (like that Taurus revolver which can use .45 Colt and .410) but it must have a rifled bore. Smoothbore muzzle-loading pistols aren't short-barrel shotguns under the NFA because it defines a firearm as firing fixed ammunition (i.e. unitary cartridges).
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So, if a shotgun is defined under the NFA as having a smooth bore, what if one were to put a rifled barrel onto a shotgun that just happened to come with a pistol grip from the factory? What if that rifled barrel was taken down to short lengths? Or is there something im overlooking?
 
So, if a shotgun is defined under the NFA as having a smooth bore, what if one were to put a rifled barrel onto a shotgun that just happened to come with a pistol grip from the factory? What if that rifled barrel was taken down to short lengths? Or is there something im overlooking?
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Once a shotgun, always a shotgun. And you can't turn a rifle into a pistol if it was sold as a rifle (unless you file the appropriate paperwork).
 
Ok, thanks guys. I figured it was probably still covered somehow. I guess i was just hoping to stumble across a loophole. But i guess im not the only one to think about that :)
 
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