Building Sten

Look at this chart. The 6th line from the top is the M16 bolt carrier. Note how many AR15 manufacturers include this in their semi automatic AR15 type rifles, two of which have them as an option. The ATF's position is that an M16 bolt carrier group in a semi automatic AR15 rifle will NOT cause the weapon to fire more than one shot with a single function or manipulation of the trigger. It never has and it never will. The parts that convert an AR16 to an M16 are in the FCG, not the BCG.

071120-AR-Comparison-Chart.jpg
 
No doubt, but this is VASTLY different from claiming that "Colt has always shipped their semi auto AR15s with an M16 BCG." Though many manufacturers don't care one way or the other, it has long been Colt's policy to throw as many roadblocks in the way of conversions as possible, and one of those roadblocks is a semi-auto-only carrier.
 
All the testimony from Colt AR15 owners states they came with an M16 bolt carriers, reporting guns bought as far back as the 80's. To the best of my knowledge Colt never sold ARs with a SA BCG.
 
I'm talking about a STEN, which is the original topic of this post, not an M16/AR 15. If you have a STEN that you built that will accept an original fixed firing pin bolt, the ATF can arrest you for possession of a machinegun reciever.

SWITCHING TOPICS

If you've followed the Olafsen case you'd know that the ATF can also arrest and prosecute you for having an AR 15 with certain M16 parts in it even if that's how it came from the manufacturer if they can contrive a test where it will malfunction and slamfire.

I'm telling you that playing with technicalities and hoping that it will get you off if you have a problem is a recipe for disaster.

Don't take the chance.
 
I remember reading an article in a respectable gun magazine about a guy building a Sten. He had some original parts and was machining the rest. I don't think it was a full auto gun.
 
freakshow10mm said:
If the part won't allow the weapon to fire in FA mode by installing the part itself, then it is not a MG.
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have you read the Olafsen thread?
http://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=275955

I assure you that if you make a gun out of a STEN kit and it can be modified quickly modified or tested under special conditions by ATF to fire more than one round with one trigger pull they can and will throw you in jail.

Every open bolt gun is considered a FA by ATF definition.

there is no way to install a STEN bolt in a gun unless it is heavily modified and have it fired from the closed bolt position.
 
All the testimony from Colt AR15 owners states they came with an M16 bolt carriers, reporting guns bought as far back as the 80's. To the best of my knowledge Colt never sold ARs with a SA BCG.
Click to expand...

Perhaps they don't KNOW what an M16 carrier looks like? Colt has always manufactured SA-only parts for shipment in its SA-only AR rifles, going back to the SP1 in the early 1960s. Those parts (and the consequent ease of conversion) have changed over time, but Colt's intent was always to prevent illicit conversions.

From 1963-85, the AR-15 SP1 (shipped as a semi-auto rifle) was also shipped with a carrier that had been relieved at the lower rear, so that even if you were to drill the sear pin hole and mount a set of FA parts in the lower, the carrier wouldn't trip that sear. That style was carried over into the AR-15 Sporter II and the AR-15A2 in 1986. When Clinton's Ugly Gun Ban passed, Colt almost dropped the AR for civilian sales entirely, but Colt changed hands and the new owners started producing the Sporter/AR-15A2 Sporter/HBAR Sporter rifles, and added the lower sear block in 1989; the rifles shipped with the sear block can only be used with a SA-only carrier that has been milled to allow it to pass that block.
Sorry for the thread hijack; one of the things you're going to have to do to produce a legal semi STEN is to make a two-piece bolt that operates via a striker.
 
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