ATF ruling 2010-4: Airsoft toys = firearms??

Usually I am pretty skeptical. In this particular case they may be on to something. Some of these guns function with very little modification other than adding the upper, although they are of such poor quality pot metal they would not function for long.

Will it harder to keep bad guys from getting a hold of weapons? Yes it will. No convicted felon without rights restoration can go to a store and legally buy a gun right now. This in my mind is mostly a good thing. We can argue all day about the merits of what constitutes a felony but most are felons for good reasons.
 
Don't forget that metal tubes and even soda bottles (if attached or intended to be attached to firearms) can qualify as suppressors, which are regulated as NFA items.

Many firearms laws and regs make no sense or are ineffectual, but I don't see a reason why this airsoft ruling is any more arbitrary than previous laws or ATF regs.
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For three years, a shoe string was a machinegun. The fine folks at the BATFE have no interest in logic or reasoning.
So if you own one of these airsoft guns, what happens now? Depending on which model one might own, would you be guilty of owning a illegal machinegun?
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AFAIK, the issue is not that the toys are machineguns but, rather, that they are firearms. Repercussions, if any, for the manufacturers (no FFL07) would probably be greatest, followed by the sellers (no FFL01) and, lastly, the buyers. They may try to issue fines; not sure how that would turn out without intent. They may try to confiscate the toys; all XXX thousands of them. They may just say "Well, we really stepped on our dicks here" and drop it. The notice isn't on the "Rulings" section of the ATF site anymore; that's why we've hosted the documents over on GL. I believe they're still in the Google cache also, but I'm not sure how long that stays there.
 
I think they are mistaken:

any weapon...including a starter gun...which will or is designed to or may
readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an
explosive; (B) the frame or receiver of any such weapon...
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Notice the author justifies the ruling by quoting the definition of "frame or receiver". But what's the definition of "weapon"? It can hardly include an airsoft gun. That is not a weapon. The way the above text is worded, it has to be a weapon in the first instance. A non-weapon that can be readily converted to a weapon is not covered by this text.
 
Guys, we aren't talking about shoestrings or soda bottles. I'm no more a fan of arbitrary ATF rules than any of you, but this is pretty much a cut and dry case of someone manufacturing AR lowers and selling them without following firearm law as currently defined.

It can look as much or as little like a real firearm as you want, cosmetic features should have no bearing on the determination.
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It has nothing to do with cosmetics...
 
but this is pretty much a cut and dry case of someone manufacturing AR lowers and selling them without following firearm law as currently defined.
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No, its not. Its a case of someone manufacturing a realistic toy, which, because somone figured out can be used to make some real firearms parts function, has been declared a firearm in and of itself.

The maker should be going "Oh Holy Crap!" and figuring out what to do for the future, but I see no intent on their part to have made a weapon (in violation of law), only a replica.

What happens now, however, will be, at the least, interesting.
 
this is pretty much a cut and dry case of someone manufacturing AR lowers and selling them without following firearm law as currently defined.
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Agreed that it is NOT cut and dried. I'm sure there are a hundred household Items I could find around here that are NOT firearms that I could stick under an AR15 upper and make it hit the firing pin. Should any skinny, springy thing that fits in the BCG of an AR15 be regulated by the ATF? What if it fits in the BCG and hits the firing pin with just a little bit of work? I'm sure I could whip something up out in the shop with some toenail clippers and a block of wood; that doesn't mean those things fall under the purview of the BATFE.

If the rumor is true about the ruling being rescinded, it would seem to show even more strongly that they pulled their heads out of their asses and realized it wasn't a cut and dried case but, rather, an absurd ruling made by someone trying to sink the bureau's claws in deeper.
 
Tin foil hat anyone?

You can't make a replica of an AR lower, fully functioning, and get around the law by calling it a toy. If they rescinded the ruling, it was because they realized they cant ban something based on form, but on function. Which is why I said: cosmetics have nothing to do with it...

Oh, and making your own AR lower will not get you in trouble. If you try and sell it for profit, you will. I suspect that also goes for a "house hold items" AR lower... But I'm no lawyer...
 
The second sample ATF examined was an air gun replica of an M-16 rifle that has the physical features of an M-16 firearm. It has all M-16 fire-control assembly pin holes formed or indexed, and utilizes a proprietary drop-in fire-control mechanism that did not include an automatic-fire sear. The receiver of this air gun is identical to an M-16 receiver, except for two dimensions. The length between the takedown pins is approximately 1/8 longer than on an M-16 receiver, and the width of the fire-control cavity is approximately 0.31 greater than an M-16 receiver.

ATF conducted a test of this air gun. In conducting the evaluation of this sample, the upper assembly was removed, the proprietary drop-in fire-control mechanism was removed, the proprietary bolt-stop was removed, the indexed pin holes were drilled to allow installation of M-16 fire-control components, and an M-16 upper assembly was installed. A test fire was then performed, and the test demonstrated that the sample was capable of firing semi-automatically, expelling a projectile by the action of an explosive.
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If the toy gun "receiver" can be drilled out to accept M-16 fire control assembly and declared a firearm, how is this different from something like those 80% receiver blanks sold without FFL (I think for AK and maybe other designs)? All you do with those is to drill the indexed spots out too, right?

Seems like a mighty fine line as to how much modification is allowed to either make it a firearm or not.
 
Sounds to me like they took some aluminum replicas, drilled them out to AR-15 specs and called them AR-15s...

WELL OF COURSE! Anyone can drill out aluminum to make an AR-15 reciever, given the right tools and time...
 
You can make a working AR lower out of a block of wood or piece of plastic. So yeah, just about anything. Are we really going to classify a block of wood as a gun? I don't think so. However converting an airsoft is a lot easier.
 
True, but the requirements to use power tools and get the engineering details correct makes it rather more than most people will go through.
 
The ATF says stoopid things at about the same rate as my 17 year old.

That said, someone making an AR receiver and labeling it anything but a firearm was just living in a different world than we're currently in.


Larry
 
Seems like a mighty fine line as to how much modification is allowed to either make it a firearm or not.
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I'll agree with that. It does seem that "readily convertible" is a bit vague... I'm not sure how much of that applies to Title 1 firearms though, because I usually only hear readily convertible with reference to Title 2 fireams, aka machine guns.
 
makes perfect sense to me. if someone pulls a gun on you, will you stop to think "maybe its an airsoft..."? i wont. if it turns out to be a "toy" and the person survives then they should thank their lucky stars, if not, well...
 
NWPilgrim said:
If the toy gun "receiver" can be drilled out to accept M-16 fire control assembly and declared a firearm, how is this different from something like those 80% receiver blanks sold without FFL (I think for AK and maybe other designs)? All you do with those is to drill the indexed spots out too, right?

Seems like a mighty fine line as to how much modification is allowed to either make it a firearm or not.
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That's what I was thinking, too, but you said it first.

The BATFE seems to have forgotten that they have determined that it is not illegal to manufacture your own firearm. If it's for personal use (excluding machine guns), no manufacturer's license is required. And they have ruled that if the owner performs just 20 percent of the machining, it qualifies as home'built. I can't imagine that converting one of these airsofts to work as an actual firearm is any different than an 80 percent receiver.
 
makes perfect sense to me. if someone pulls a gun on you, will you stop to think "maybe its an airsoft..."? i wont. if it turns out to be a "toy" and the person survives then they should thank their lucky stars, if not, well...
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I'm not sure that's relevant to the issue at hand. If your trigger finger is that itchy, you'd just as soon shoot someone with a black squirt gun or any number of other things that you could mistake for a real firearm/threat. I can't imagine that, barring even deeper rectal-cranial inversion by the ATF, squirt guns or other similarly shaped items could ever legally be considered firearms.

Regardless, this thread isn't about justifying shooting someone because they're holding _______ (insert object here). It's about whether or not machining a given arbitrary object to allow it to function in conjunction with existing firearms parts makes that object a firearm.
 
Logic says to me that if you take an object, (airsoft part, block of wood, lump of metal, whatever) and permanently modifiy it (machine it, drill holes, etc.,) and combine it with firearms parts and they function together, then it is a firearm.

And if you don't, it isn't.

But then, logic and govt angencies don't always take the same path.
 
44 AMP, I'm inclined to agree with that logic, but I don't think life (and the law in this case) is that black and white.
If you start with a block of aluminum, and finish with a fully functioning AR lower, at what point does it become a firearm and can't be sold for profit? At the finished product? Logic might tell us so, but what about the step right before its finished, where all you have to do is machine one single hole? What if that hole only needs to be punched out with a punch and hammer? Wouldn't you think there is some point in the middle where that block of aluminum becomes so much like an AR lower that it should be treated as such? Or is it still the absolute final product that would be considered a lower?
 
From a legal standpoint, I think it should be at the point were no machining/drilling is required to make it a functional reciever. That seems like a reasonable standard to me.
 
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