The way the last ban was worded, you could not build a stripped lower into a complete rifle with the "evil" features.
But who is going to know? I have never heard of a single case where this was prosecuted in the ten years of the last ban.
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The way the last ban was worded, you could not build a stripped lower into a complete rifle with the "evil" features.
But who is going to know? I have never heard of a single case where this was prosecuted in the ten years of the last ban.
Yup the lower is the only thing registered, you can have one lower and 100 uppers that you use with it. The only weay they would know if you put stuff on it POSTban is if you said "hey look at my new whatchamagiit I just put on" or for someone to throw you under the bus.
As long as that lower is registered ahead of time its good to go. I believe I did read that the Evil Witch from NY is trying to get lowers, uppers,and everything else banned in her HR1022 wet dream. If she wants guns banned so much she needs to get rid of her armed guards.
No, you are backwards engineering the whole "it's cheaper to build" theory. You can put a lower and an upper together for less than a complete rifle because on a complete rifle the FET is paid by the manufacturer and passed onto you the consumer.
When you attach an upper to a lower yourself, it's never paid. FET is never paid on a complete rifle in that case.
They haven't set the rules on this ban and how you will or won't be allowed to build onto existing lowers. I can tell you that with the last ban, if a receiver wasn't a rifle, it couldn't be sold as pre-ban and be reconfigured at will. It had to be a RIFLE, a COMPLETE Rifle at the time of the ban to be considered pre-ban. Yes, the receiver is the weapon but it sure as hell is not a complete rifle.
Lower equals Weapon
Lower does not equal Rifle
Rifle before ban equals Pre Ban
Rifle after ban equals Post Ban
It's not up to them to prove you didn't have a rifle. It's up to you to prove you COULD have had a complete rifle.
If at the time of question, you have no money because you foolishly bought 15 lowers and only had 2 uppers, they know you only had two complete rifles- there's no other way around it. You pick 2 lowers to consider as preban and the rest were not complete rifles and are therefore by default pre ban receivers never built into preban guns and didn't count the same.
It's up to you to show you are in the right.
I don't take a suppressed SBR to the range and tell the owner I dare him to try and prove if I do or don't have two stamps. I show him the two stamps. If he asks to see them I show them. It's that simple. But, it's my burden to prove or show that I'm in the right- not theirs.
We aren't talking "crimes" per se. There's no crime against having 13 preban receivers that weren't complete rifles. So, the whole "innocent until proven guilty" you may want to throw at me right now doesn't apply. Noone is being charged with having too many receivers. It is when you want to sell them or build them that you have to show you went through the correct steps.
And all that aside, anyone thinking they need 15 receivers before a ban is stupid. They need to work to keep the ban from happening and even if it does, you'd be MUCH better off with ammunition and training and buying other things like a few more pistols or uppers. How about instead of $1500 in CHEAP stripped lowers, you buy a nice reloader and components to load your own ammo. Then you buy two lowers and one of CDNN's M16 upper kits for $400 for a retro approach. The other you could put a basic stag upper on.
Or, take the $1500 and buy 5 stripped lowers. Register them all as SBRs for $1000. Come up with a nice company name and form an LLC. Stamp your LLC on the front of the magwell.
Now you have 5 NFA weapons you can sell or do whatever you want with whenever you want.
Buying up all the lowers/mags you can in fear of a new ban is assuming that any new legislation will have a grandfather clause. Last time there was only a grandfather clause because they couldn't pass it otherwise.
To date there has not been any legistlation in the US that has required outright forfeiture of firearms. There is various versions of registration (NFA items) and items that can no longer be purchased new ('86 import ban), but nothing that has required anyone to give up anything.
I believe that we'll see stages. The AWB was supposed to be stage I, which is banning manufacture and selling while grandfathering in existing items. The next stage will be registration, such that ALL existing firarms of a certain type will have to be registered, and the final stage is confiscation.
Federal gun control legislation needs to pass the House (done deal with today's demoCrat majority), Senate (not so much a done deal, but for argument's sake a slim possibility), and then the POTUS.
Fast forward to 2008. Hillary / Obama take over W's and Dick's offices. Do they also retain the House? Probably. Do they get a larger majority in the Senate? Unlikely, but possible. They are playing it smart, even in the wake of the Virginia Tech situation damascus peLosi and harry the body rEid are holding the anit-gun bills at bay. Like snakes in the grass, they are lying in wait.
Frankly, 80% lowers might not be a bad idea, for a variety of reasons.
That seems to be the general plan from what I can see as well.
Paul- In the last AWB, there was nothing that I saw that explained what "assembled" meant. For example, is putting an upper on it assembled? Is dropping in a LPK assembled? Does completing the build, then stripping it back down again to save space, or to relocate parts assembled? The lower receiver is the actual weapon according to the law, so assembly or stripped shouldn't matter.
If you are concerned, and its really an issue, I would suggest buying the lowers, along with a handful of LPKs.
ADCO, Bravo Company, or G&R Tactical would all be solid choices in helping you out with this if you go the LPK route, and I believe they all sell the lowers as well.
Stick- the lower receiver is the registered component of a weapon and is considered a weapon for registration purposes but it is not considered a complete weapon for most other purposes.
A long time ago, I told the USPS personnel I was shipping a lower. They would NOT allow a weapon to be shipped despite the real rules. But when I cut open the box and they saw that although it might be a registered weapon it could not do anyone harm as it was configured- not a complete weapon and it was shipped.