purely hypothetical question

D

Deja vu

New member
Lets say that at an auction a person bought a storage shed that had not been paid on in a long time and was now up for auction.

Lets say that inside that shed was a wooden crate with a 1911 and a Thompson sub machine gun. With out getting in trouble is there a way to find out if its been registered with the NFA and if it has is it possible to transfer it to your self with out the previous owner?

this is purely hypothetical.
 
You need to place the Thompson under the care of an attorney and have the attorney call the ATF. If it is legal the transfer will be complicated. If it is not, the attorney can arrange a surrender to the ATF.

No firearm is worth 10 years of your life in Federal prison and a permanent loss of your rights.
 
The only part that is the 'machine gun' is the registered part, i.e., the part with the serial number. If I ran into something like that, and I owned the shed/locker/storage room, etc, I would do what everyone else said, but if ATF demanded that I surrender the gun, I would see if I could legally keep the parts. Those parts are sometimes very hard to find.

If a machine gun was made before 1986, but the MG wasn't registered, and isn't in the database, can it be added to the registry? I guess that's the question being asked.

I guess the second question being asked is: can an NFA item be transferred via form 4 to an individual, trust, or corporation, if there is not a transferring owner/party?
 
Willie, how about the second question?

It is actually a very relevant question. Let's say that someone buys a storage locker and inside the storage locker is an NFA registered MG that was abandoned by the owner. The locker was put up for sale by the business owner, and rightfully sold by the storage locker business owner.

Let's assume further that the original owner of the locker and machine gun (being the same person/entity) is nowhere to be found or that the owner entity no longer exists because the owner is either deceased or dissolved as a business entity.

I am surprised that the above scenario doesn't happen more often. If not with MGs, I expect that one day these scenarios will play out with other NFA items like silencers, since such items are becoming more common.

And it doesn't have to be a storage locker. People abandon, surrender, or lose items all the time, which are then subsequently rightfully possessed by the succeeding possessor.

There would be no transferring party on the form 4.

So can a form 4 be completed without a transferring party?
 
Poor advice as to giving the FA to an attorney and WRONG. First any attorney who would accept it is not worth having. The attorney has no more protection than anyone else from possessing contraband. No different than drugs.

Best COA would be to work with ATF to take possession until the registration status is confirmed. Once you have notice that you are in possession of the contraband, your clock is ticking. Trying to do the right thing as soon as the issue is known is understandable, delaying the process shows an intent to keep the contraband.
 
Tony, the second question is one for the ATF to answer.

I asked a similar question to a field agent once. I did not get a definite response. He told me that he would have to ask his boss.
 
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