Interesting story...
Here's the deal: Any weapon which has a bore diameter
larger than 0.5" is called a "destructive device", and
so is subject to the NFA. "Well hold on a minute there,
Zoosh, does that mean any shotgun other than a 410 is
a NFA-regulated Destructive Device?" Yes! Unless it
is found by the Treasury to be "particularly suitable
to a sporting use" (or words to that effect). It just
so happens that the Treasury has "found" pretty much
all ordinary 12ga shotguns to be "suitable to a sporting
use". If I look at my Rem. 870 sitting there in the
corner, with its Surefire fore end, its Trijicon
GR sites, extended magazine, Vang Comp 18" barrel, and
side saddle full of slugs, hmm, it doesn't look like it has much
sporting use to me, but fortunately for me, the Treasury
thinks it is a sporting arm.
Anyway, getting back to the story... this particular
shotgun (I think it had a name like "Streetsweeper"
or something) didn't have any extraordinary features,
but it looked dangerous and ugly, so the Treasury
reclassified it as non-sporting, and therefore a
Destructive Device.
Here's where it gets interesting: The ones that had
already been imported or manufacturered were grandfathered.
They were not classified as DDs. People could continue
to own them.
Do you see the legal problem here? The design itself
was classified as a DD. There's no provision for saying
that some DDs are NFA and some DDs are exempt from NFA.
All DDs are NFA. 100%, unless they're owned by the
military, basically.
The only legal way to "grandfather" these DDs would be
to open up a 90-day amnesty period. Unfortunately that
was not done. If it had been done, well, amnesty isn't
selective. The Secretary of Treasury can't declare
amnesty only for a certain model. It's for everything.
If that had happened, we would have been able to
enter new machineguns into the registry, under amnesty.
On that topic, we should all be pressuring Bush
and the new Treasury secretary to declare an amnesty
period. The registry has been closed to new machineguns
since '86, and that's 15 years too long for me.
I'm editing this post. I forgot to include some
information:
To write to the President:
President Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
To write to the Secretary of the Treasury:
PAUL H. O'NEILL
Secretary of the Treasury
1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington DC 20500