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Comment by ReverseCold | Hacker News Reader

Just curious, what if you wanted to register a gun that you made (put a serial number on it, etc)? Is there even a legal pathway to do that?

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US laws doesn't allow any way to register a firearm. Stores have to keep records, and tracing requests have to be forward to the store of purchase. There's a great documentary on this:

https://vimeo.com/180763356

Not quite correct federal law provides a method to serialize a gun if you are applying a tax stamp for registering with the federal government if you are adding a NFA regulated modification.

states law as usual vary but only a few states have serial number database of guns. Ymmv if they will allow it or not.

I'm pretty sure you have to in California?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_California

If we are talking about the US yes and no. There is nothing illegal here about producing your own guns without any licensing until you start mass producing them to sell. It is fairly straight forward to stamp or engrave a serial number and submit the paper work of it. However we don't have a 'list of guns' to just submit some random new serial number too, they only want the serial if you are doing something not normally available like short barreled rifle, silencer, or selectfire/full auto. Technically you can even make your own machine gun legally if it is of your own design and manufacture, doesn't leave the state, and only really comes up against legal hurdles when you are producing them for the purpose of selling them to civilians (which you will of course be denied). You can however sell them to the military or law enforcement, well the prototype for the design anyways, you would still need to get federal licensing to produce them in mass to sell the actual finished product to the military but that just takes a bit of money to push the paperwork through. There is an even further legal/not-legal hole that allows you to sell that prototype machine gun you made to somebody else, you can sell it just because you don't want it any more or need the money, but only if producing it originally wasn't for the purpose of selling it which would make it illegal to even have in the first place. I don't think it has been challenged either way (I might be wrong) but the lack of legal clarification and the potential for losing all your gun rights is the only reason you don't see homemade machine guns being sold more often. If you sold more than one or two you would assuredly be investigated and likely charged.

So tl;dr, you only need register a serial if you made something like a machine gun and hold a federal firearms manufacturing license, and you can only make one or two versions of each design without changing things, and the serial number only really matters when selling or trading it, which you both are and aren't allowed to do depending on what the courts feel your intentions were. Otherwise the mechanical design of the gun can be freely sold to law enforcement or the military. Also the rules change once you actually get a manufacturing license (you are signing away some rights in the process, similar to signing away your right to not have an ID while driving when you get your driver's license) but if you get your manufacturing license you should probably have an actual lawyer.

> Technically you can even make your own machine guns legally if it is of your own design and manufacture and only really comes up against legal hurdles when you are producing them for the purpose of selling them to civilians (which you will of course be denied).

This is really poor advice. The BATF considers just having the parts without the requisite Class III license (really a tax stamp) to be a felony.

The Hughes Amendment to the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986 prohibits civilians from owning any machine gun manufactured after May 1986.

All the other 5 categories of Class III firearms (SBRs, SBSs, Silencers, AOWs and Destructive Devices) can still be made, even by an individual, if he/she first applies for and receives permission to do so.

To do so, they must file an ATF Form 1 (maker form) and pay a $200 make tax fee.

A civilian can still legally own any machinegun that was created PRIOR to May, 1986 as long as they get approval on an ATF form 4.

There are exceptions to the rules for producing prototype weapons, that is why you have to be made 100% of your own design for them, you can't copy another machine gun and claim it is a prototype. In order to register or sell a new machine gun design you need to have a working physical version already existing. You also need to make something that could reasonably be considered a prototype weapon you were making to legit sell to the government, some pipegun hardware store contraption obviously wasn't produced with the intention of being sold to the military or law enforcement and would not qualify as a prototype.

Regardless, you should definitely speak to a lawyer before attempting anything like this, there are tons of local laws that you can break even if you are following state and federal law. And once you break a local law it becomes an illegal weapon and negates any legal standing you had with the state or federally.

> Technically you can even make your own machine gun legally if it is of your own design and manufacture, doesn't leave the state

The only ways to legally produce a new machine gun in the US right now are to pay thousands of dollars a year for a federal firearms license and special occupation taxpayer license to manufacture, or to otherwise receive explicit permission from a US government agency to get the ATF to approve a Form 1 application to make and register an NFA firearm. See 18 USC 922 (o) regarding machineguns not registered prior to 1986. (Wickard v Filburn dispensed with the notion of claiming to avoid federal law by keeping activity within one state.)

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