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Generally have to deal with the paperwork for an FFL-SOT to (legally) buy the actual automatic component. It's in a kinda messy legal area, but more because of the legal overhead and warrantless searches from the FFL side than anything with the SOT.
You can by forced-reset triggers without any paperwork (other than any other gun purchase), but how close they match 'real' full automatic is in the eye of the beholder, and the feds are kinda schizophrenic about them. Some states also separately prohibit FRTs/
My understanding, perhaps out of date, was that legal manufacture of new select-fire firearms was still banned by the 1986 act.
FCfromSSC was talking about FRTs, which don't fall under the strict definition of machine guns.
((uh, arguably. I am not a lawyer, no guarantees that the ATF won't shoot you and your little dog too anyway.))
But the FOPA1986 specifically prohibited the transfer or possession of machine guns unless authorized by a state or federal agency, unless they were lawfully possessed before that period (the ATF further regulated this to require a tax stamp). Combined with the other exceptions and regulations, this basically made new manufacture or transfer illegal for normal people.
Except transfer or possession that the ATF authorizes are excluded, because they're a federal agency authorizing FFLs. And while the ATF has a lot of discretion for giving out FFLs, once they've done that, the SOT that authorizes transfer or manufacture of NFA weapons is just normal tax documentation, and the ATF has no authority to reject it. You just can't sell any NFA weapons to anyone that isn't in the same category. It's really stupid, and it's the sort of thing where you're giving the federal government your home address and fingerprints, but it's... pretty much just straight-up legal.
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"Full-Auto" as a legal term means multiple shots fired with a single pull of the trigger. Forced-Reset Triggers force the trigger fully-forward again during the firing cycle, which is then immediately pulled again by the trigger finger in a distinct mechanical action. Legally, they are semi-auto, just semi-auto at 600-800 RPM. Semi-auto's legal viability has never depended on how fast the trigger is being pulled previously, and indeed many shooters have demonstrated the ability to fire semi-auto firearms and even revolvers at speeds equivalent to machine guns with no legal repercussion. Likewise, mechanical aids such as crank-fire have also been legally-permitted methods for generating rapid fire for roughly as long as we've had gun laws. FRTs merely make this easier to do. They are "select fire" in the sense that they have a selector switch with safe/semi/rapid fire settings. They are not "select fire" in the sense that they do not have a legally-recognized "full auto" setting, only a setting that allows the shooter to fire legally-semi-auto at a consistent rate of hundreds of rounds a minute with no significant effort.
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Or print/mill the parts yourself, that works too and requires no interaction with the legal system.
At least as long as the tools are available. States are falling all over themselves to ban 3D printers that don't call home and ask mommy if they're making a gun part; New York's law covers CNC milling machines and such as well. You could go full John Browning and do it all by hand, but there's fairly few of us who will have his skill.
It requires a machinist and a drill press. Machinists are always hard up for cash, and they don't tend to like the government very much. And drill presses are the sort of tool that, yeah, not everyone has one in his garage, but plenty of people do- sometimes just to have, and sometimes for actual non-firearms related use.
Yeah, and then after taking your money, the hard-up-for-cash machinist turns you in to the state for a bounty.
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State bans on CNC aren't preventing the import of auto-sears for criminals by the containerload, and they can't prevent me from constructing a functional bump-stock out of cardboard and hot glue. The law, at this point, mostly functions in an attempt to keep people from talking about what a failure it is to actually exert meaningful control in the real world.
And sure, this allows people in blue areas to be oppressed, so long as the vast majority of people are willing to cooperate with maintaining the system. This balance is not stable, and cannot be maintained in the face of even a small number of people sincerely wishing otherwise. You are correct that neither I nor anyone else has a way to give you current society, only less oppression for you. But if you are willing to let go of current society, the oppression can also go, and speedily.
Sure, criminals accept arrests and killings as part of the cost of doing business. The state can accept a certain amount of that as long as the majority of the tax cattle are kept in line.
But then I die, because I cannot do everything needed to live myself.
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