What if?

[mordeeb]

Lets say you have a NFA gun and it breaks or blows up to the point where it couldn't be put back together could you get a rebuild and reuse the serial number?

 

[willbdavis]

I am pretty sure you're asking for trouble. The ATF does not look kindly in NFA serial numbers being reused. There were some notorious cases where people destroyed Mac 10s and used the serial numbers to make Browning 1919s.

 

[mordeeb]

Right i am saying rebuilt the gun not made it into something else.

 

[dyer01905]

IBTL

 

[Finalygotabeltfed]

The place to ask would be subguns.com nfa board. Lots of long time experienced 02/07 SOT people there.

As far as I know, there is no limit as to the extent of repairs that can be done on an nfa weapon as long as the part with the original serial number and other registered markings are still used.

 

[Kevin_NH]

Jeannot's knife (aka Ship of Theseus)

Sounds familiar.

"The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, in so much that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same."

 

[mordeeb]

Sounds familiar.

Love it!

 

[Rob Boudrie]

Right i am saying rebuilt the gun not made it into something else.

I guess the real question is "how much of the original full auto must be preserved in order for it to be a repair?". It could be anything from keeping the serialized receiver (or sideplate) to just welding the section of metal with the old serial number into a new receiver or sideplate.

 

[xtry51]

I guess the real question is "how much of the original full auto must be preserved in order for it to be a repair?". It could be anything from keeping the serialized receiver (or sideplate) to just welding the section of metal with the old serial number into a new receiver or sideplate.

I think we all know that the answer to this changes based on how much the ATF would like to rape you on that particular day. You won't get a straight answer from them.

 

[mordeeb]

I guess I am just paranoid that a pricy NFA item could be destroyed!

 

[Finalygotabeltfed]

I guess I am just paranoid that a pricy NFA item could be destroyed!

Use good ammo and the likelihood of that happening is very slim to none.

And by good ammo, I don't mean the most expensive ammo on the market, I mean ammo that has been used by a lot of other people without issues, including steel cased stuff. Your own reloads are ok too as long as you take due care in loading. Matter of fact, reloading may be the only way you'll be able to shoot if you shoot often.

Saw a post on another board that 90% of the "brass" on the ground at Eden Vt. machine gun shoots was steel cased stuff, so don't think your gun is too good for steel cased, almost everyone uses it, including myself.

 

[01SVTvert]

Damage the markings (SN) and there is no way to rebuild it. One manufacturer specifically remarked M16 receivers with the same SN as older guns during past rebuilds and ATF no longer allows that, either. They state that a serial number cannot be remarked in any way or it becomes contraband.

Iirc there is even a letter out there about increasing the depth of original markings that were getting worn and hard to read and the ATF said no and that if the SN became unreadable then the gun had an obliterated SN and was contraband.

Could you rebuild it and have no issues? Possibly. Problem comes whenever a transfer happens and something is not exactly the same as prior and the ATF declares it contraband.

 

[Kevin_NH]

"The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, in so much that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same." -- Plutarch, 100 A.D.

Love it!

I admit that my first thought was of Terry Pratchett's novel The Fifth Elephant, but the Plutarch quote is easier to Google.

“This, milord, is my family’s axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation . . . but is this not the nine-hundred-year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y’know. ”