Thanks to a Gun Owners Foundation and AmmoLand News Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, the gun-owning community now knows that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has determined a metal sliver is a machinegun.
The FOIA in question included a criminal examination letter by the ATF’s Firearms and Ammunition Technology Division (FATD) that examined a Noveske N4 AR-15, that was chambered in .300BLK and equipped with a Franklin Armory BFSIII binary trigger. A binary trigger allows the user to fire one round on the trigger pull and one round on the release of the trigger. According to The Bureau, a machinegun is a firearm that fires multiple rounds with a single action of the trigger. Since the gun owner must consciously release the trigger, the ATF considers this to be two separate actions of the trigger. Thus, it is not a machinegun.
The criminal examination letter, which the ATF’s Sacramento Field Office requested from FATD, showed a fingernail-sized piece of metal and a worn disconnector can cause a Franklin Armory BFSIII trigger to fire automatically — a malfunction which is called “hammer follow.” After determining the gun in question was firing automatically and was a machinegun, the ATF determined the gun owner violated the National Firearms Act (NFA).
The ATF examiner separated the upper and lower, removed the piece of scrap metal and tested the rifle again. This time, the AR-15 performed normally. When the examiner pulled the trigger, a single round fired. When the ATF employee pulled the trigger, the rifle fired another single round. The ATF determined the sliver of metal and disconnector was the equivalent of a drop in auto sear (DIAS).
Because the ATF considers any device that converts a semi-automatic firearm to a firearm that fires automatically to be a machinegun, the ATF has determined this ever-expanding category could include DIAS, lightning links or 3D-printed Yankee Boogles. In this current case, it could be anything that could interfere with a disconnector in a binary trigger. It could be a spent primer, or even a metal shaving from the gun.
According to Aidan Johnston, Director of Federal Affairs for Gun Owners of America, “To a bureaucrat determined to infringe on the Second Amendment so that he or she may exercise an iota of statutory ‘authority,’ I suppose anything is a machine gun, whether it’s a bump stock, a forced reset trigger, or a metal shaving,…But let me be clear, a sliver of metal is not a machine gun, and machine guns are protected by the Second Amendment.”
American gun owners could be considered guilty of violating the NFA in the eyes of the ATF simply for having a piece of debris stuck in their binary triggers.
A gun owner could be charged with a felony that lands them in jail for ten years if their legally owned firearm malfunctions. Hammer follow can be a dangerous malfunction, but it shouldn’t land a person in federal prison.
Charging a gun owner for a firearm malfunction is like charging a driver for speeding as a result of a stuck accelerator or a pilot for murder as a result of a plane crash caused by mechanical failure. The gun owner did not cause the firearm to act as a machinegun; a mechanical failure did. There is no way that the gun owner could predict that their firearm would malfunction.
The FOIA response shows that the ATF has no intention of having faith in American gun owners.
About John Crump
John is a NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. John has written about firearms, interviewed people of all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons and can be followed on Twitter at @crumpyss, or at www.crumpy.com.
This assumes that the exact same thing cannot happen in a standard AR-15 trigger, but it can happen (and has happened). I’ve seen some of the cases myself. Yeah, it’s an entirely differnt design, so the mechanism of how it turns semi-auto trigger into an unintended full-auto trigger… but it can happen. In fact, I would bet that any semi-auto gun could malfunction to become an unintended full-auto from wear damage and debris. In any case though, a nation of cowards deserves tyranny, because a nation of cowards allows tyranny (and therefore creates it). All firearms are a Right and… Read more »
Fatf!
Woooo
So I have had a Berretta shotgun for 30 years one morning 17 or 18 years ago was on the skeet field at first station. Called ‘pull’ and with a single pull of the trigger, it went full auto and blast of the bird with two consecutive shots. Never did it before or since.
Glad there wasn’t an ATF agent standing next to me or I would probably be in federal prison right now.
Under the current regime, if only the trigger identified as non-binary, I’m sure it would be okay.
Ammoland. Stop using Scribd. The material is behind a paywall or requires a registration. Google has a free doc server that everyone can access. All the rants against the ATF do nothing. It will take money for lawsuits and lawsuits and lawsuits against the ATF and to help those railroaded into prison by chips of metal, key cards, and barrels 1/32 inch too short. The Communist regime has an infinite cashflow to destroy those entrapped by them. We do not. The Communists fight the long war. We lack strategy and vision. Only a tiny percentage of gun owners support the… Read more »
SCOTUS confirmed almost a hundred years ago that weapons most capable of waging war with, most suitable to the militia and military, were the only weapons protected by the 2nd. That obviously includes machine guns. In the Miller case, they said short barreled shotguns were not protected and could therefore be taxed by the NFA because they were told the military didn’t use them in trench warfare in WWI. They were ignorant of the facts and there was no defense present, so no one corrected their ignorance. Even so, their decision that arms for modern war are protected means machine… Read more »