Get Around NFA Legally [2021]

The National Firearms Act of 1934 was the culmination of decades of vicious gun control efforts based around ethnic and socio-economic discrimination. In an effort to prevent the “wrong” sort of social and ethnic groups from accessing certain commonly known firearms, the US government passed a sweeping gun control act that effectively denied access to safety equipment like silencers, commonly used weapons like short barrel shotguns and rifles, and readily available machine guns that were safely used by many law abiding Americans.

In the name of suppressing criminal activity and enforcing social control, these firearms and safety tools were subject to a $200 tax (approximately $4,000 when adjusted for inflation) and a heavy handed registration scheme that ensured only the wealthy and well connected could own what had previously been easy to acquire firearms.

In 2021, nearly a century after the NFA was passed, a $200 tax on a silencer or other regulated item isn’t as oppressive as it once was, and registration approval is no longer discretionary. But this is America; we hate taxes and infringements on our freedoms. Necessity is the mother of all invention, and never have we been as creative as we are when it comes to firearms. Of course, we do this in a legal fashion (and sometimes give a wink and a nod) as we sidestep some outdated bureaucratic terminology.

So how can you legally bypass the NFA in 2021 without having the Alphabet Bois show up, shoot your dog, and haul you off to jail? Well, read on.

AR-15 Pistols

Grab some popcorn, because this is going to get weird. We all know a rifle with a barrel under 16” is considered to be a short barrel rifle, and we all know handguns don’t have buttstocks or vertical foregrips.

The AR-15 pistol legally laughs at all of these ideas. Take an AR-pattern receiver that has never been built as a rifle. Put an upper with any barrel length under 16” that you want on there. Add an angled foregrip that has a 45-degree angle instead of a 90-degree angle. Add on a pistol stabilizing brace. The end result sure looks like a rifle, feels like a rifle, and can even legally be shouldered as a rifle. But it’s not a rifle. Because it’s a handgun. Confused yet?

This is the ultimate example of the absurdity of the NFA and its wildly contradictory guidelines and definitions. So what’s actually going on here?

Handguns cannot have shoulder stocks; that turns them into SBRs. They also cannot have vertical foregrips because that makes them AOW (Any Other Weapons), but a pistol stabilizing brace isn’t a stock and an angled foregrip isn’t a vertical foregrip.

How is this possible? Because the NFA was created almost a century ago, and in that time, firearms development and our usage of such developments have changed dramatically. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

What all this means is that you can kit out an AR pistol to be much like an AR SBR, and do it legally, because it is still a handgun. All because some of the parts on it had not been invented yet in 1934. So you can save that $200 you would have spent on a tax stamp and use it to buy more ammo!

Pistol Grip Shotguns

The classic sawed off shotgun has a barrel around 14” or so, and some sort of pistol grip. These “fearsome” weapons are only scary and forbidden because the government said so. Tell an American they can’t have a gun, and they’ll find ten legal ways to get around the law – and a few more that aren’t legal. Since we only care about and would only ever pursue the legal ways (seriously, kids, don’t defy the ATF if you love your dog), let’s look at a couple ways you can have a compact, handy shotgun that isn’t a shotgun.

The easiest way is to just get a shotgun with an 18” barrel and a pistol grip like a Mossberg Cruiser. For many people, a classic pistol grip shotgun will scratch that itch for a shorter, more compact pistol. But for some, the itch persists.

A few years ago, a clever person with a tape measure read the NFA and started giggling. They wrote to the ATF for clarification, giggled madly at the response, bolted a few things together, and began enjoying a 14” pistol grip shotgun that was perfectly legal without jumping through the ATF’s hoops.

But how, you might say? Because the NFA has some very specific parts in its listings and rulings. For instance, a short barrel shotgun has to have a buttstock and have a barrel under 18” in length. If there’s no stock, then it’s just a firearm – and a firearm only has to be at least 26” in overall length, regardless of barrel length. That is how we get fun shotguns-that-aren’t-shotguns like those from Mossberg, Remington, Black Aces Tactical and others. Unless you absolutely need a shotgun under 26” in length, legally want to conceal it, or have a buttstock, then why pay the tax stamp? Ditch the shotgun; get a firearm. It’s the American thing to do.

Full Auto “Simulators”

We’d all like to get a machine gun, but the registry was closed in 1986, and there are no new machine guns being made for private ownership. So, your only options are to win the lottery and buy a registered machine gun, or go the more cost-effective route and get something that is broadly termed a full auto simulator.

Simulating things that are illegal isn’t illegal. For example, you can play a racing simulator and cruise at 100+MPH with no problems, whereas doing that on a city street would be a big no-no.

You see, the ATF defines a machine gun as a gun that fires more than one round per single pull of the trigger. Pull the trigger once and get one pew? Good to go. Pull the trigger once and get multiple pews? Now you’ve got a machine gun.

The earliest ways around this were various crank triggers of dubious utility and safety. These basically tried to turn your gun into a Gatling style firing system and were good for making noise and pushing the limits of safe gun handling.

Another option is to use a binary trigger. You see, it’s not full auto if one pull of the trigger fires one round, and one release of the trigger also fires one round. Honestly, at this point the ATF should just give up and become a convenience store instead of a government agency, but I digress. A few states do ban binary triggers either by name, or due to weird old laws that so broadly define machine guns as to run afoul of this device. But most people should be fine and can enjoy once again thumbing their nose at the ATF.

The ATF isn’t always behind, though. A perfect example is the bump stock, which forced the shooter’s hand to reset and pull the trigger again quickly. The government, in all its wisdom, redefined machine guns to outlaw bump stocks.

What About Silencers?

Sadly, the nature of silencers and silencer law pretty much ensures if you have a device that makes any firearm quieter, it has to be registered. But there’s one big exception…

Blackpowder muzzleloaders exist in a strange world of their own. As far as the ATF is concerned, they really don’t exist. They aren’t firearms, they aren’t regulated, and you can do darn near anything you feel like with them.

At one time SilencerCo sold  a .50 caliber muzzleloader fitted with a permanently attached silencer. Only it wasn’t a silencer. It was legal because the silencer couldn’t be removed and mounted on other guns, and it was fitted to a muzzleloading rifle, which wasn’t technically a gun.

However, this product was discontinued and is no longer available from the manufacturer. That means if you want a legally silenced gun without the paperwork, you’ll have to look into building one yourself, and to be absolutely safe, you should talk with a trained firearms attorney before assembling your own suppressed muzzleloader.

Otherwise, on all other guns, there is simply no way around the NFA here. Sorry. But hey, you could be the first guy at the next Civil War reenactment with a tactical musket!

Of Course You Could Just Build Whatever You Wanted…

There are two ways to build whatever NFA items you want. You could just do it, flout the law, and hope you don’t wind up getting a free trip to Club Fed for ten years or so. (Seriously, though, we do not recommend this!)

Or, you could get an 07 manufacturer FFL and 03 Special Occupation Tax (SOT) and legally build NFA items to your heart’s content as long as you keep the licenses up and remain in business. FFL123 has been helping people just like you get the FFL they want and deserve for nearly two decades, and we want you to get started in the amazing world of NFA manufacturing today!

That’s right! You, too, could build and convert machine guns, silencers, short barrel rifles, and destructive devices in your workshop and make money at it! Discover what the gun grabbers would prefer you not know, and find out right now how you can enter the lucrative world of NFA manufacturing and have access to full auto weapons and more whenever you want!

Just click here and get started!