Ever get grief over NFA weapons?

R

RAnb

Moderator
Anyone here ever have a problem with NFA weapons? Problems like over zealous police, TSA at the airport or just other people who think you are a criminal (or wanna be criminal) just for owning or talking about them?

My problems have been limited to those people at work who think is it strange or illegal to own a silencer, posters on other forums who have accused me of breaking (or trying to) the law and the TSA in Seattle when traveling with title 2 weapons. I usually ask people why they have a muffler on their car when they ask my why I have a silencer for my rifle. One co-worker was expressing concern for his safety when he heard me talking about my gun collection. When I asked him what he planned on doing to me that would make him believe that I would harm him with my guns, he did not have an answer. Very disappointing when a person like that runs from a debate.

As far as I know this forum only has one person who is biased enough to suggest that those wishing to own title 2 weapons are potential criminals and he only has one lap dog. It is worse on some of the other forums I have posted on .

Ranb
 
Never had any problems with NFA items. Everyone at work knows I have machineguns and suppressors. Many have shot them. The occassional new guy will think such things are illegal. They are easy to educate. I've never had an LEO ask to see my paperwork.
 
I have had the usual "Aren't they illegal" and or "Don't the Feds come to your house" questions. :rolleyes:

I find it very annoying when some redneck who owns more guns than I do demands "What do you need that for?!? How many holes do you have to put in a deer?!?" This has happened to me more than once. Apparently the only reason to own guns is to kill animals. :mad:

The LEOs of my area are (mostly) wise to the NFA scene. I actually brought a form 4 into my Sheriff's office for CLEO sign off that had white-out on it. The deputy looked at it, pulled a new form 4 out and said "Why don't you fill out a new one, I would hate to see them kick your form 4 back because of white-out" He then asked if I needed any blue fingerprint cards! Awesome! :cool:
 
This is my first post, I am new to this forum here is my experience with the TSA agents at the Dallas TX airport. I was going to visit my dad in Wisconsin so I decided to combine the trip with some business for a tax right off for the company, so I decided to take some NFA firearms.

When I went to check in the guns the agent told me let me get my supervisor I’ll be right back, next thing I know I have two cops asking me all types of question. I explained I was a class 3 dealer on a business trip and showed them all my paper work FFL/SOT, well that really didn’t help so I missed my plane and got to talk to the ATF agent for a bought 10 minutes and he told the TSA agents I was within my legal rights; so for the inconvenience I got upgraded to first class for free, but the food still sucked.


I believe TSA gets all there employees from the reject pile at taco bell!!!:D
 
What did the ATF agent need to talk about for ten minutes? Why wasn't a brief look at your FFL/SOT enough for him to just tell TSA that there was nothing to see here?

Ranb
 
The only reason he talked to me for the ten minutes was he liked the way I modified the ar-15 upper, I ended up doing the same setup for him a couple weeks later so he turned into a customer.
 
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The only grief I got when I purchased my AC556 was from my wife. She didn't care whether I had a machine gun or not, but she didn't like being "interviewed" by the CLEO's plain-cloths investigator, and she sure as heck didn't like the investigator asking questions of our neighbors (eventhough he tried to do this discretely).

I don't generally tell friends and co-workers who aren't into guns about what I've got. Most of my gun friends think its sort of cool that I have a machine gun and like when I let them fire it.

One non-gun couple felt certain that this was illegal, since they had a friend who worked for BATFE who told them something along this line.

Another non-gun friend mistakenly thought that my semi-auto "assault weapons" were machine guns and when I explained in excitement that I finally got a machine gun, he sort of scratched his head thinking that I alread had some.

You just never know who a non-gun person will react to ANY type of gun you own. The general lack of knowledge and range of prejudices about guns never ceases to amaze me. My advice is - be careful about to whom you tell "gun related" things to.
 
I've only been told I can't use my suppressors at a gun range here in Houston. The range officer told me they have trouble hearing supressed weapons on the line. In which I call BS because both of my supressed weapons sound like a slightly louder 22LR.:confused:
 
I'm not sure what you would need to "hear" a suppressed weapon for on the firing line - I agree BS. What matters is "hot"..."cold"...and the ability of shooters to hear the RO, if present.
 
I think my co-workers all knew about my guns, but I never talked about them at work, except with a couple of guys who also owned guns (one owned several auto weapons). I registered my NFA guns in the 1986 amnesty and have now sold them as I am getting older and don't want my wife stuck with paperwork when I pass on. In all that time, I never heard from BATFE or any of its predecessor agencies. My only contact with them was to report an address change, for which I got a "thank you" form letter.

(I had one amusing incident at work. A co-worker and gun owner once held up an item and challenged me to tell him what it was. I replied that it was a rear sight windage screw for a Model 1903 Springfield rifle. He just went away shaking his head and muttering that "he does know his s**t about guns.")

Jim
 
I've only been told I can't use my suppressors at a gun range here in Houston.
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Is this range a club in which the members have a say in how it is operated? It would be a good idea to get together with other members and club officers to ensure that this idiosy does not result in more restrictions.

Ranb
 
When I get the “what do you need that for?” question I do my best to get the inquirer to the range, once they do a few suppressed FA mag dumps they get the picture. The most questions from an LEO I’ve received were on how to go about setting up a trust (his department head wouldn’t sign off).
 
Is this range a club in which the members have a say in how it is operated? It would be a good idea to get together with other members and club officers to ensure that this idiosy does not result in more restrictions.

Ranb
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No, it's a public range.
 
Interesting discussion. Just today I took a friend and neighbor who is an NPR liberal type out shooting with me as he had expressed some interest in all the guns I have showed him. We took an M1919A4 semi out to shoot and ran about 1,000 rounds thru it and I let him shoot about a can of ammo. Now this is not a machine gun but looks like it and sounds like it, especially with a crank unit attached. When we had finished, his comment was "Boy that was fun!" I also let him shoot my FA 1928 Thompson and he got a kick out of that one too.

As we were going out to the range where we shoot, he asked why someone would "need" a machine gun. My response was why would someone "need" a sports car capable of going 200 miles per hour? You can't drive that fast, even out here in New Mexico. It's not about need but just having fun, and the history behind each gun. When we were getting ready to shoot each gun, I gave him the short history of each gun we had. He saw the connection as we shot the guns. "Boy that was fun!"
 
No
Never had any issues.

I have had people ask me why I need such and such. I don't argue with people like that and don't even answer them.
 
Who makes policy at the public range? Are the RO's allowed to restrict anything they want?
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Depending on where you live, state and local laws apply to public range. It doesn't always matter if the equipment is legal in the state, but there can be a state law saying that "You can't use X, Y and Z at public ranges". Where I live, you can't even load more than six rounds at a time into any autoloading guns on a public range, NFA stuff is completely out of the question. I believe our public range restrictions in this town are both a mix of state and local law.

I don't own NFA because I'm too poor for those toys, but I shoot with a guy who owns a lot of nice stuff and he can only use it on his own property (which doesn't matter because he's got his own 300 yard range on his property). He keeps quiet about most of his NFA stuff except when talking to people he trusts because he says it always causes more trouble than it's worth when he brings it up in a conversation. We live in an area where most people only have guns for hunting, so it's easy to catch grief even if you just carry concealed, let alone NFA stuff. People always go with the "Why do you need to own that here? There's not much crime!" because they think owning anything that isn't a "hunting" firearm means you are some kind of paranoid survivalist looking for an excuse to shoot someone.

I wish people understood that it's possible to own guns for purposes other than making things die. :rolleyes: Most people get into NFA weapons because it's fun, it's the gun equivalent of owning a nice sports car and shooting fully automatic is the gun equivalent of driving really fast...the only difference is that driving really fast actually IS a criminal offense. :rolleyes:
 
People give me grief all the time about the recoil on my 20 gauge AOW. I warn them, but they never believe me on how hard it kicks.:D
 
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