""...The receiver is torch cut..." Makes it a high priced paperweight. It's extremely difficult to fix that."
That's...kind of the point for a demilitarization process
"It's always amazed me that the BATFE would require these kind of arms be modified for what amounts to a totally unregulated market, instead of either requiring semi-auto conversion only like they did with the MG42s from Serbia, or, horror of horrors, addition to the full-auto registry"
It's always amazed me for the three years I've been in the gun building hobby, that for all the gnashing and wailing of the ATF, home made guns are hardly ever used in crimes, and when home made guns run afoul of the law, it is always in connection to far bigger troubles like organized crime or legally-dubious sting operations.
It all comes down to the regs being fundamentally unenforceable, and gun owners being legally-accommodating to a fault. Hell, just last week I spent a total of eight hours of my own free time explaining in detail to an ATF examiner exactly what/how/why I was doing for a home built SMG semi-auto, even though there is no legal burden to (although having explained my intent, I am now legally bound to follow it)
You can't stop Druggie Bubba from cutting down his rifle barrel, Biker Bubba from sawing down a shotgun, Poacher Bubba from making an oil filter silencer, Tinker Bubba from building a black-pipe STEN, or anyone else ambivalent about these laws from simply ignoring them. You can only punish them, but you can only do that when they first get on your radar for doing
actual crimes. The kind with victims.
"The ATF has to work within the limits of the law, as they can only make executive decisions about how they enforce laws, they can't create new laws"
'Once a machine-gun, always a machine-gun'
'Once a rifle, always a rifle' (even SCOTUS took issue with this one)
'Constructive intent'
'Can be so-modified in a short period, with access to skilled labor and a full machine shop'
'Is redesigned in function through placement against the shoulder'
'Aids or assists in rapid fire'
Not one of these axioms of ATF authority exists
anywhere in the laws they purport to operate within.
"However, they can require the receivers to be torch cut in order to meet the definition of demilitarized."
Yes. A single, thin, clean saw cut through a simple section of the gun,
used to be considered sufficient. For decades, in fact. Then one day...it was no longer. The ATF can require that already imported, ATF-approved, and sold demills be confiscated at their order when they decide their previous destruction wasn't good enough (PPSHs/CZ26s), or require additional damage to already-sold goods without compensation (STEN MKIV's). Entire shipments of importer's wares have been seized upon phony pretenses ('readily convertible' airsoft M16s).
"Somehow, the barrels ended up being banned for import without being torch cut also"
And we can all thank
George W. Bush for that one; only 'sporting' barrels may be imported. Receivers are banned in their entirety at this point; not even shredded pieces are allowed. I think that direction came during this administration (not sure how limiting the ATF's grasp to 'not readily convertible' can be legally squared with 'forbidden from import in any form' but no one's challenging them)
"so prospective builders now have to replace both. It's my understanding that FAL kits would be a lot less expensive without those requirements."
Well, they have to replace half the gun to meet the stupid 922R requirements anyway (even a historically/monetarily significant piece like my Hotchkiss Universal kit must be so molested as to possess no more than 10 foreign made parts, since the ATF recently decided after fifty years that SBRs are subject to 922r)
Oh well, at least the ATF is holding up their end 'enforcing the law' by keeping the Form 1 application approval times just under a year. Not like actually collecting taxes & issuing the tax-stamps in a timely manner is implicit in the enforcement structure laid out by the NFA
"I'd personally rather they allow the parts kits to come in and give me a way to build them than restrict them only to semi auto built imports"
There's two forces at play here; the ATF is the domestic side. They have literally no authority over anything that isn't a firearm receiver or bolted onto one. The State Department ultimately oversees the import restrictions, since Congress unwisely vested pretty all authority over foreign trade in the executive branch many years back. That's how Obama could ban a whole range of AK imports, how Bush could ban all barrel imports with a stroke of a pen, that's how Clinton banned Chicom/Russian firearm goods, how Old Bush banned all imports of 'assault rifles' leading directly to the '94 congressional AWB, and how Reagan banned import of newly-classified "armor piercing" ammunition like Carl Gustav 9mm steel-core. The ATF can 'identify' items as being ban-worthy for import, but State stamps the rejection & seizes the shipment.
TCB