A Real Head Scratcher

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VUPDblue

New member
Today a friend of mine and I were talking guns in the garage, and we ended up on the topic of NFA firearms. He asked me a question that really made me scratch my head. Here goes; "If you have a RLL or RDIAS installed in your AR15 does that make the AR15 a 'machinegun', thus able to accept a shorty upper? Or is the 'machinegun' the RLL or RDIAS and not the AR15 and you can't have a shorty upper, because then it would be a SBR with a 'machinegun' inside? My inclination is to say that with the RLL or RDIAS, then you have a functioning 'machinegun' in the form of your AR15, thus it should be able to accept a shorty upper. Then, again, if you take the RLL or RDIAS out, you are in posession of an illegal SBR.:confused: :confused: :confused: Can anyone shed some light on this?
 
Your logic is correct - while the RDIAS or RLL is a machinegun by itself, once installed in an AR15 the host AR15 then temporrily becomes a "machinegun" and can have short uppers without being separately registered as a SBR. Once the RDIAS or RLL is removed from the host, the AR15 then loses its temporary "machinegun" status and any short uppers have to go (as do any M16 fire control parts).
 
i concur. this is not unique or unusual with DIAS. be it ARs, HK, etc, upon
removal of the sear/link the rifle with short bbl (which had been just fine as
a machine gun) must have prior authorization to have existed as a SBR.

there may be a few weird exceptions one can hoopjump through to keep from
running afoul of the law, but those situations are rarely encountered....or
desireable.
 
It's pretty simple. When you put in the LL, you can add the short upper. Follow reverse order to revert back. THink of it this way, when you pop the upper to add the RLL, push both pins and add the shorty. When it's time to pull the RLLL, pop both pins and swap uppers, yank RLLL out.
 
Your logic is correct - while the RDIAS or RLL is a machinegun by itself, once installed in an AR15 the host AR15 then temporrily becomes a "machinegun" and can have short uppers without being separately registered as a SBR. Once the RDIAS or RLL is removed from the host, the AR15 then loses its temporary "machinegun" status and any short uppers have to go (as do any M16 fire control parts).
Click to expand...

waitaminute.....(delayed response)......just how realistic is this ??

1) if you had parts within your control, they would argue that you have created
constructive possession of a machine gun. this has already been adjudicated
as such...infamously so.

2) but now, given the above, how can you now *not* argue that constructive
possession situation has occured. it's almost as if we're denying that CP
exists. in order to argue the above ie "once removed from the host..." CP
ceases to exist. you cannot clean your firearm unless it were a SBR

what am i missing here? am i reading this too narrowly?
 
the accepted legal test of 'making' a machine gun is simple: you have the
parts in your possession, whether they are assembled or not.

however this thread has turned to: once you remove the sear, the firearm
is not a machine gun, ie unless the firearm (which happens to have a short
barrel in this example) has been granted SBR status previously, one was in
possession of an unregistered SBR.

the above two paragraphs conflict.

so....by that argument, I'm asking how could one ever clean the firearm
which is a sear gun if the sear cannot be removed and the rifle (in short
trim) never registered as an SBR ?

am not fencing with anyone....simply asking where i'm thinking askew. I
*am* a by-product of the public school system so know that I may not as
sharp as you folks. :-)
 
He is talking about a Lightening Link or Drop In Auto Sear. Each one of these is considered a machinegun by itself. When installed in a host weapon, that weapon becomes a machinegun and for as long as the device is installed, it may also have a <16" barrel installed.

A similar situation happens with a registered sear for an HK. The registered sear is generally installed into a trigger group. That trigger group can then be moved between different "uppers" for making an MP5, MP5SD, MP5k, etc. When attached to an HK-94, that 94 may then have a <16" barrel installed without being registered a SBR.

The problem of constructive possession occurs when you have more <16" uppers than you have machineguns/LLs/DIAS's. ATF contends that if you have one more <16" upper than you have registered machineguns and possess a semi-automatic AR-15 (in this case), you are in possession of one unregistered SBR.
 
BATFE has issued an advisory opinion in 1985 on the subject stating its ok as long as when you remove the sear, you also remove the other fire control parts and any short barrels.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/wbardwel/public/nfalist/atf_letter35.txt

When you have a registered sear and M16 fire control parts installed in a semiauto AR15 you have one machinegun. If you remove the sear and keep the M16 fire control parts in the AR15, you then have two MGs (the registered sear and the unregistered rifle with the M16 fire control parts in it). If you subsequently remove the M16 parts, you go back to just one machinegun - the registered sear. While the M16 parts and an AR15 would normally be a problem, its the possession of the registered sear along with it that makes it ok. While the registered sear is a machinegun without the other M16 parts, it can still make one MG with them. The statutory definition of a machinegun includes a "combination of parts...for use in converting a weapon into a machinegun". So a registered sear along with other M16 fire control patrs would still be a "combination of parts" constituting one machinegun even though the only part actually bearing the serial number was the sear itself.
 
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