My buddy dropped off this  inherited Thompson at my house the other day, apparently he tried disassembling it and got it stuck in the above position. Try as I might I can't get it to move forward or back, although I'm not very experienced in Thompsons at all. Hopefully one of you guys can help. Thanks.

Bet you a doughnut the hammer's forward.

FP did NOT NI.  

Small screwdriver to depress the sear/ takedown button


Also that thing is hideous

The old "Freedom Forever" commemorative chrome Auto Ordinance "Thompson."

I say leave it like that as an object lesson for people who spend good money on a poser POS firearm.  

This.  

The semi-autos have to have the takedown pin pressed into the upper to get it past trigger assembly.

I'll try that and report back this evening. Yes, this thing is an abomination. For some reason my buddys late grandfather bought it and none of the family wanted it so now he has it.

UPDATE: I assembled the abomination but now the magazine won't lock in lol

Surely that's the original magazine & mag catch?

The semi auto Thompsons can be a lot of fun. I’ve SBR’d two of them and they’re a hoot.

That's what I was thinking.  GI ones will not work without mods for some STUPID reason known only to Auto Ordnance.  This one looks to be the chrome one supplied with the gun.

The "stupid reason" was that the ATF demanded that the semi-auto Thompson could not use full-auto parts.
So, to prevent using full-auto bolts and parts the upper receiver was made slightly lower then the full-auto.
This prevents standard magazines from seating deep enough to be locked in place by the mag catch.

To use original full-auto magazines, you can file the mag catch hole in the back of the magazine a slight bit upward so the catch will enter the hole, OR alter the magazine catch to allow the catch to seat in an unaltered magazine.

A bit of anti-gun history.......
In the post-war days the ATF would not allow any firearm to be made that even looked much like a Thompson SMG.
This was to the point that when Plainfield wanted to put an aluminum stock with a real M1A1 Thompson butt stock on their M1 Carbine, the ATF almost stopped them from selling it.

When Numrich announced he was going to market a semi-auto legal Thompson carbine, the ATF refused to allow it.
Numrich threatened to take them to court, and knowing that since there was no law or regulation that prevented the gun from being sold, they backed off rather then risk a Federal judge handing down a far-reaching decision.  
However, they insisted that they'd ban it if it was possible to convert it to full-auto or open bolt fire.

At a news conference announcing the new semi-auto Thompson Model 1927-A1, Numrich bragged that he'd spent $100,000 designing a semi-auto Thompson using many original full-auto parts that could not be converted to full-auto.

Within two months The Shotgun News was full of offers to sell instructions on how to convert the new gun to open bolt, and full-auto.

Ha!  Nice bit of history!!!!  Thank you!!!!!