Manufacturers License?

L

Lazy D

New member
At what point does a gunsmith need a manufacturers license?
Does it only apply to making a new gun with a new serial number?
Or, if you take a stipped AR lower bought on a FFL and assemble a gun, have you "manufactured a gun"?
I have asked different ATF guys and have received different opinions.
Please no bashing the feds. I just wonder if anyone has faced this issue, and knows for sure.
 
Are you talking making for personal use or for resale? BIG difference.

Assembling from parts made by licensed companies is completely legal (provided you build legal guns) without any licensing.

To do gunsmithing work for profit or payment you need to have an FFL, not a manufacturers license, as long as you are not manufacturing the reciever.
 
Let say you have an FFL (gunsmith) business. You have a customer who wants a custom built match AR. You buy a RR stripped lower. You buy one of the many kits. You put it together.

As far as the Federal regs go, have you manufactured a gun?

No Exise tax has been collected on any of the parts.
Do you have to collect and pay that to the Feds?
 
No, you have not manufactured a gun. You have assembled one using a reciever that the manufacturer paid excise tax on already.

Rock River already took care of the tax, no worries for you. The ATF site has all the regs on it if you care to doublecheck my response.
 
The feds are moving in on gunsmiths and calling them "manufacturers" and demanding back taxes on every gun that they have worked on. They are Arkansas-defining "manufacturing" as doing anything that adds value to the gun or parts they started with. If they are allowed to get away with it, it will be a while before they start tracking down stripped receivers to tax individuals for assembling guns on them, but I would not bet against that or any means of increasing taxes.
 
I have been informed in another thread that it is possible to buy a "neutered" receiver directly from a manufacturer. (One that hasn't been assigned a "pistol" or "rifle" category yet. And hasn't had the excise tax paid. I think it is when the tax is paid that the receiver becomes either a pistol or a rifle.:confused: )
I understand that building a "legal" gun from scratch is OK (and maybe using a "neutered" receiver.) as long as it is never sold or transferred to someone else.
"Building" a gun on an existing, taxed receiver should be fine. But it wouldn't surprise me to hear that the Feds are trying to find a new way to tax even this.
Anyway, if this is true and it is going to be transferred/sold, I would think that whoever builds a gun on it would need to pay the excise tax and register it as a pistol or rifle. This may be considered "manufacturing" and require a license.

Another question for the experts. If I build a gun from scratch, for my own use, do I need to serialize it?

Dean
 
This is what I mean

It is such a gray area that most folks aren't for sure. I asked this question because I had heard that a smith got jammed up on such a deal. He was takeing old falling blocks and rebarreling, new wood, sights etc... and selling beautiful match guns. The word is they got him on manufacturing, and charged him the back exise tax. It was over $10,000. Now it has me worried that if I buy an old 700 and rebarrel, refinish, and put it in a nice stock, am I in that gray area? Like I said earlier I've asked a few ATF guys and received different answers. I can tell you that most of them are OK guys and could careless about a legit smith building target guns and such. But, there was one who put it to me like this. He said if you used nothing but the original action, it is no longer a Remington 700 BDL. it is now a Lazy D special. Made me start getting a little paranoid.:confused:
If I have to start paying $1,000 for my license I aint going to be happy.
 
Like I said earlier I've asked a few ATF guys and received different answers.
Click to expand...

Verbal opinions aren't worth the paper they're printed on. Write the BATF Technical Branch for a written response.
 
I've got an 07 manufacturers license. it costs $150 instead of $200. the tax branch of the atf sent out a letter with the ruling that if you manufacture fifty or less firearms a year you pay no excise tax. jim
 
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