There is no conclusion that has come out of the NFA's Legal Counsels office regarding transfers to Michigan residents based on our State AG's Opinion.

I have been assured that when something is known I will be advised. This information comes from NFA. And as time passes I will continue to follow up with NFA seeking information as to our status.

There is no official or unofficial news coming out of NFA BATFE for me to report regarding our status or changing their approval protocols to match the clarification of Michigan law by our Attorney General Mike Cox and to start approving our transfers.

Many of us have already purchased pre-1986 mg's and have filed the form 4 transfer paperwork. Transfer forms will be showing up at NFA any day if not already. Then they have to process those FBI prints etc. etc.

Not certain as to when things will break loose. I can tell you this I am sure a lot of smoke is blowing up peoples asses as state, local and federal officials struggle to face reality and deal with true, correct and factual information regarding the AG's opinion.

Quoted: There is no conclusion that has come out of the NFA's Legal Counsels office regarding transfers to Michigan residents based on our State AG's Opinion. I have been assured that when something is known I will be advised. This information comes from NFA. And as time passes I will continue to follow up with NFA seeking information as to our status. There is no official or unofficial news coming out of NFA BATFE for me to report regarding our status or changing their approval protocols to match the clarification of Michigan law by our Attorney General Mike Cox and to start approving our transfers. Many of us have already purchased pre-1986 mg's and have filed the form 4 transfer paperwork. Transfer forms will be showing up at NFA any day if not already. Then they have to process those FBI prints etc. etc. Not certain as to when things will break loose. I can tell you this I am sure a lot of smoke is blowing up peoples asses as state, local and federal officials struggle to face reality and deal with true, correct and factual information regarding the AG's opinion.

Any word on the email you sent the AG in regards to the clarity of his opinion? I emailed the AG's office for clarity?

Again thanks

No - because the AG has already issued his opinion which has clarified the meaning of state law MCL 750.224. Generally the AG will not respond to questions from the public. My email to him was advisory on my part informing him that I felt MSP was muddying the waters with inacurate information.  The clarification has already occured no further clarification is necessary. Kellys opinion on mg's and suppressors is gone - superseded, MCL 750.224 has been determined to allow michigan persons to own and possess that which is specifically prohibited unless duly licensed, and that license is an approved form 4 from the fed Director, BATFE which meets the exception in subsetion 3 (c) i.e. A person licensed by the secretary of the treasury of the United States or the secretary’s delegate to manufacture, sell, or possess a machine gun, or a device, weapon, cartridge, container, or contrivance described in subsection (1).

So I don't know what we can expect from law enforcement other than they need to abide by the same laws we do and we need to insist they properly acknowledge the laws. If they can't understand MCL 750.224 and the AG's opinion then we need to move along with out them. For now the ball is in NFA BATFE's legal counsels office. I hope they can understand it!

Thanks for your trouble..

my neighbors and I want me to have a suppressor, look forward to your info, thanks

Tag for an update!

I will be emailing into NFA to ask if somebody can ask the ATF legal Counsel - WHATS TAKING SO FUCKING LONG! LOL

Seriously - I will be emailing and asking if we can get any idea as to what their thinking along about Friday morning.

The Chief has said he would let me know - but I will ask him again just to stay on their asses.

Again, thanks for your efforts.....

E-mail sent to Bustoff and tagged!

tag for updates.

Quoted: my neighbors and I want me to have a suppressor, look forward to your info, thanks

 Same here!

Hey Mods, this is a pretty important thread, IMHO could we get it tacked to the top to keep a eye on updates?
Joe

Let's keep this up top then.

Email went in Thursday afternoon 1/19 to NFA. No response as of Friday 1/20 end of day. So I expect there is nothing new to report and no new information to make a return email necessary. Or the contact individual has been out of the office. Sheer speculation on my part. Nothing new to report. Next week is another week.

Nothing new to report. This past week I have sent in to the NFA Chief additional emails with content that argues why silencers are legal under the existing state statute and ag opinion 7183. The Chief returned my email thanking me for the update to my documents and he forwarded the provided documents to the Legal Counsels office.

I have attempted to call the NFA Chief all day this past Friday the 27th he did not answer his phone.

I have called the AG's office and was shuffled up several levels. No one could confirm for me any coordination between the AG's office and the NFABATFE. This does not mean anything as I left a message for the Chief of the firearms unit to call me as he was not available.

Tried to get some information from anybody to no avail. I will update as I hear anything.

Again I am pushing hard for a campaign to thank the AG for the 7183 opinion. He has done his job. He has given us a great gift. Please make a donation to his 2006 re-election campaign. He deserves our financial support.

AG Cox has been the best friend gun owners have ever had in the Michigan Attorney Generals Office. I plan on keeping Mike Cox as our AG who is up for re-election this fall. I went to Cox's re-election website and made a secure credit card donation of $150. I also signed up as a volunteer and in the comments text box I thanked the AG for the job he is doing and in fact I told him I support him 100% and I truly appreciated the 7183 opinion as a near perfect masterpiece of work. I thanked him for upholding the law - perhaps you could pay his site a visit, donate a few bucks, enlist as a volunteer and leave him a friendly supportive message in the text boxes that appear on his website. Simply doing this reinforces our support for a guy who has made it a possibility for us to own pre86 mgs and silencers something we have not been able to do in nearly 30 years!

http://mikecox2006.com/volunteer.php
http://mikecox2006.com/donate.php

I understand this is a great victory for gun owners here in MI, but I was wondering if it was too much to possibly ask for SBRs to be allowed? Most of the other gun-friendly states allow SBRs. I'm actually kind of pissed I cannot SBR my PS90 due to MI laws. I know plenty of Michiganders would probably want to do the same to some ARs or AKs.

Main problem with that is the legislature kinda locked that up pretty tight in the statute. Believe me we have looked at it. Perhaps we have a couple ideas for it - but they carry risk.

The legislature has said in MCL 750.224 B I believe that no person may possess, manufacture etc a SBR SBS period unless it has been declared a C&R by the feds. They were extremely specific.

The next best thing is a select fire weapon and as a machine gun its defined as a machine gun at least for now and it can i believe have as short a barrel as you would like.

The other next best thing is an AOW - no butt stock, never been a rifle setup like a cruiser type sg or serbu super shorty with forward vertical grips being classiefied under fed law as an AOW and as a pistol under Michigan law. Might end up wrangling with MSP and your CLEO but fact of the matter they are pistols under state law.

Please make a donation and offer volunteer time to Cox's re-election campaign anyway. Also thank him in the text boxes for opinion 7183 and reward your friends and punish your enemies.

MikeCox2006.com

I got one of those automated phone surveys earlier today from Cox's office.  Normally I hang up on those but I answered his and made sure that I answered yes to the "would you vote to reelect Cox" question.

I was at the State Fair Gun show (well show as I cant think of a better word for it but something that small isnt really a show in my mind)

Regardless..  There was someone who had a Mach 10, a Full Auto M-16 of some type and also a fully auto Browning of some type.

So seems like things are really happening here!

ATF has not made any official public statements as to how they will treat Michigan persons attempting to file transfer forms for NFA regulated items such as transferable machine guns and suppressors. As you are aware Michigan has gone from being a C&R only state to a transferable state at least in regards to state law. The ATF still can not believe this has happened and believe me I expect their working overtime trying to find a way to defeat us and in fact thumb their collective noses at us.

During the past couple of weeks I have been trying to get information updates from various sources such as Ken Houchens at the NFA and from Attorney General Mike Cox’s office. Houchens has said their legal counsel was in contact with our AG’s office in response to my asking him for a status update. This has led me to attempt to verify this statement and I have found this is not the case. Now either somebody is lying or Houchens is being misled. Having just made that statement I have called Houchens office numerous times in an attempt to speak with him. He is not answering the phone. Now either he’s out of the office all the time or he has both my phone numbers pegged on his caller ID, if he has that feature and he does not want to talk to me. I certainly can’t explain why this would be as I have always been extremely respectful and courteous when I have talked with him in the past.

To verify if there was any federal ATF coordination with the AG’s office I sent email directed to the AG’s executive assistant. I received a call telling me who to speak to at the AG’s office and a phone number for him. I spoke with the AG’s man in charge of answering questions about AG Opinion 7183 Bob Ianni. He told me there was no coordination or contact from the fed ATF other than an agent from the Upper Peninsula who was asking similar questions about what was legal as he was being asked the same kinds of questions from law enforcement people and the general public and he wanted to know how the changes would affect him and his job. So I expect this ATF guy was simply a field agent. Now if this is coordination with the AG’s office I’ll be a Monkeys Uncle!

I spoke with Bob for probably 40 minutes talking about the fact that ATF was having a hard time coming to reality or understanding the statute and opinions. I got the impression he was the writer of the opinion 7183. We talked about all kinds of things regarding the opinion such as the superseding issue. I made the point to him that the act of superseding the old opinion had the effect of lifting the state ban on mg’s and silencers. I expect he agreed. Bob proceeded to tell me that silencers had been legal to possess since 1979 and directed my attention to the AG’s footnote 4. This was a reference to a letter opinion from former AG Frank Kelly to then NFA Chief Phillip Price. If this was true I thought this is a SMOKING GUN. I got a copy of the letter in question.

From former AG Frank Kelly to former NFA Chief Price dated Apr 25, 1979 at Price's request (this is in foot note 4 of 7183 opinion) which basically says that due to a change in Michigan law as amended "under section 224 (2), that the general prohibition against manufacture, sale, offering for sale, or possession of a machine gun, muffler, silencer, bomb, etc., shall not apply to a person licensed by the BATF to manufacture, sell or possess such devices.” Price was attempting to confirm that the Michigan statute had indeed been changed and if it had then licensed persons would qualify to possess 224 1 (a) mg, (b) silencer, (c) bomb…. etc. indeed anything under the purview of the NFA items listed in the statute. Kelly concurred telling Price the law had changed and the prohibition does not apply when a person is duly licensed by the secretary to possess a mg and that a person who demonstrates proof of such licensure is not in violation of Michigan law. This is a WOW in my book!

This letter seems to refute all of the things ATF has been telling people such as “well pre-86 mgs might be ok but prolly not silencers”, “the opinion only applies to mg’s it does not say anything about silencers” , “nah ah ahhh that requires legislation” and the latest one “were red stamping all transfer forms from Michigan people cuz were questioning the legality of the AG’s opinion” and who knows what all bullshit their telling people calling in to their offices.

Fact of the matter is the new AG opinion outlines what the state considers to be a license, how you meet the state exception to the prohibitions by getting an approved form 4 from the Director of BATFE etc. etc. and this letter from Kelly to Price which is still valid would seem to validate that we qualify to possess all the NFA regulated items listed under 224 subsection 1 i.e. (a) mg, (b) silencer, (c) bomb….etc. this old document should suffice as the intent of what is legal under state law and that’s everything listed in the statute thats NFA regulated i.e. mg's, silencers, bombs if your duly licensed period.

It should be duly noted that SBR and SBS are strictly prohibited to everybody including dealers and manufacturers under MCL 750.224 B unless they are C&R.

Here’s what my Attorney wrote to Houchens and in fact to others in BATFE such as the Detroit office. The ATF guy from the UP told me any decision on how ATF handles the Michigan issue will come from the Detroit office. Did ATF transfer their legal authority from Washington D.C. to the Detroit office? – Big mistake if they did these people are for the most part biased and anti-gun to an extreme, and in fact anti-freedom. Believe me I have wrangled with them back in the day.

Here's what my Attorney told them;

Dear Mr. Houchens:

I am writing about silencers in Michigan. In light of Attorney General Mike Cox's December 27, 2005 opinion no. 7183 on transferable machine guns to "licensed persons" and that a Form 4 is such a license under state law, and Attorney General Frank Kelly's prior letter opinion dated April 29, 1979 finding that silencers were transferable to persons "duly licensed by the secretary" under Michigan law, there remains no doubt as to the meaning of Michigan law permitting transfer of pre-1986 transferable and registered suppressors to private persons on a Form 4 tax paid.

A copy of the later Opinion is attached hereto. I am asking that ATF legal counsel review same and the obvious conclusion that such transfers are authorized be publicly noted. I have also copied a contact at the Michigan State Police and make the same request. Further delay is not warranted.

I called and talked to the ATF agent from the Upper Peninsula and here is some of what he said. This guy was concerned about how the opinion affects him and how he does his job. He also said he had requests for information about the opinion from law enforcement and people wanting to know what’s legal and what’s not. That was his reasoning for contacting the AG.

While he did not confirm he was the main contact for helping ATF to come to a conclusion he did allude to the fact that any decision would come from the Detroit ATF office which blows my mind but. He also wanted to find out from the AG if the other things listed under subsection 1 were to be included as well.

Apparently he was not getting the AGs office to concur and give a solid yes or no answer. He said he sent a letter to State Rep. Leon Drolet asking for help in making these confirmations as well. I have not been able to verify this. Now I told the guy he could request a letter of clarification just as well as I could. He said he didn't think he had that authority. So it sounds like he wants us to do his work for him.

He said other NFA items like big guns or bombs and bombshells would be a concern and are these transferable to Michigan persons as well. He alluded to the fact that if a letter opinion or letter of clarification was sent in to ATF that that may help them make a public announcement. He gave me the email address for the Detroit office to send anything in that we would like. This guy’s whole focus seemed to be how his job changes as it relates to criminal enforcement and the like based on the new opinion. Kellys old 1979 letter was sent to the Detroit ATF as that letter of clarification!!!!!!!!!!!!

Other things we talked about were transfers. He mentioned that there may be a very large number of transfers coming in to NFA and that they may have to assign additional personnel to assist in the verifications. Now I don't know how accurate this can be but it almost sounded as if Michigan ATF people may be doing the assisting.

He said there really is a time frame in which the applications are supposed to be transferred in and that they cant be delayed forever. We talked about typical transfer times too and he admitted they could run from 60 to 90 days and up to 6 months in some rare cases. I told him about mine that it was in and ATF cashed my check on 1/17 and it was in the system. I also told him he was right and there would be a bunch of applications coming in that was a fact. I told him people have transfers of suppressors and transferable mg's already mailed. We talked about SBR SBS and I acknowledged they are illegal unless C&R we knew that.

Other chitchat included discussion of the finer points of some of the better cans on the market and the nice little handgun/suppressor packages that are available. We talked about what kind of cans that were not worth the money like the titanium ones. LOL. He also said there are guys in law enforcement and the general public that are interested in the silencers too. So he knows where we are coming from. He also said he may be interested in them himself. I expect he can already have what he wants.

Another point of information he made to demonstrate how it would affect his job is if somebody made a report of somebody shooting a mg was if they went to check it out he could not divulge any information to law enforcement or otherwise as the form 4 is a tax document and therefore he could not confirm any thing to the law. I told him if the police came to investigate the same and a guy showed his form 4 then that’s his proof of licensure under state law. He also agreed with that. He also even talked about the safety inspection i.e. green card registration. I did not go along with that too much.

So it sounds like this guy wants to verify the whole deal. As we talked more about the verification he was of the opinion that the law should mean what it says - we agreed! He thinks as one reads the statute from top to bottom 1 (a) thru (e) should all be lawful to possess although not all of those items come under the purview of the NFA. He thinks it should be logical, however he thinks they need confirmation.

He also taked about how law enforcement had concerns about silencers, in fact people at MSP. I told him MSP is notorious for not knowing what their talking about! He said the people he talked with at MSP knew what they were talking about - LOL. He gave an example that they have said silencers were not included in the opinion. I kept bringing him back to the superseding point that the prohibition has been lifted period.... period..... period by the act of superseding.

I went on about how persons with criminal intent would not go to the lengths required to obtain these kinds of things. He also brought up the fact the registered owners of mg's have not used them in any crimes except for one cop in ohio - I knew that!

Well I'm going to cut here and say it looks like we may request a letter of clarification as that will not take months. If we need to we may continue down the AG opinion path. For now the saga continues.

Some of you guys might want to start complaining to your Congress person because it looks like ATF is just going to give us a hard time and perhaps we need to start to return the favor!

So let me get this straight, we have been able to obtain silencers since 79 as long as we followed the correct form 4 approval process??

Excellent  job as usual, should my letter get here it'll go to you....

I'm going to have to make a donation to you to cover your retainer
RD

Not exactly Archangel. The Kelly letter to Price was back in 1979 when Michigan law got changed to allow possession of the prohibited items listed in 224 subsection 1 to people licensed by the secretary of the treasury....

Price then asked Kelly to confirm for a fact that the law had been changed and if it had the transfers would be approved to licensed persons.

So I would expect they concluded that "licensed dealers" would be the persons allowed to possess the prohibited items not the average person as Kellys opinion still stood prohibiting persons from possessing mg's or silencers.

Now that 7183 has eliminated 5210 and it has determined that a form 4 transfer will be recognized to meet the exception of being duly licensed and based on the still effective Kelly letter to Price it can be concluded that we as duly licensed persons may possess those items refered to in both the statute and talked about in the Kelly letter opinion i.e. mg, silencer, bomb.....

This is because the Kelly letter opinion coincides with the items listed under MCL 750.224 1 (a) thru (e)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


SMOKING GUN in my opinion. However ATF still has to be the BIG BOSS and try to boss us around. Fact of the matter they are on the wrong side of the law.

If you want a pdf of the Kelly letter to Price - email me at

[email protected]

home.comcast.net/~sessa7106/KellyPriceletteropinion.pdf

Click on the link to view the letter "Kelly to chief Price"

BustOff when this is all said and done...Beer's on me...!

Bustoff, your doing some excellent work and a fine job of keeping us informed of recent conversations.  thanks.  I also contacted a few of the same people and the following accounts of conversations leads me to believe that the ATF is going to be the biggest "road block" through this whole process.
I started by stopping by the local class 3 dealer and asking if he'd heard the news and if he'd be willing to order/transfer a silencer for me.  He was aware of the new ruling and was all for getting a suppressor for me.  He asked that I first contact the local sherrif and ask if he'd be willing to sign the form 4?  I did just that and had a long conversation with "The Sherrif".  He was not aware of the new opinion at the time, but during our conversation, was able to find it on the net.  He was very supprised and very pleased to hear of this.  i think he was just as excited as i was, which was shocking to say the least.  I found out he is a "gun guy" as he asked if i'd be interested in buying his Mp5!  I almost drove off the road as he mentioned this!  He said, "This is a great thing for us gun owners!".  After talking a little more, and him asking a lot of questions about me, my family and my background he said that he would be more than happy to sign the form 4 if everything about me checked out.  He read more of the AG artical and mentioned that is did not speciffically say anything about "silencers", and asked if i could contact the ATF and find out more about this before we started paper work and paying transfer taxes.  He even gave me the number.  After talking to a few agents in the DC area, they directed me to the Detroit ATF office.  The agent there was aware of the new ruling, said it had not changed anything and was very short with me.  Seems as though the Det. ATF is not happy and sounded like he might be pissed about having to start ansewring the phone, about this new opinion, for the rest of his carreer.  Doesn't sound like they(ATF)have to do anything if they don't want to.  so there.    "whatever dipshit", alomost came out of my mouth, but i held it togather and hung up.
Next i contacted the AG's office and asked for clearification of the new mg law and how it applys to silencers.  The rep. at the AG's office i spoke to was very helpful in explaining how to go about getting the silencer question asked formally.  I have spoken to my local rep. from John Stahls office and some of the dialoge revolved around being very specific in what I/we are asking in terms of the legallity of purchasing a silencer.  I have not gotten around to this email yet but will soon.
However, it just seems that with the ATF holding the final approval of the form4 that they will, because they are ani-gun, never sign.
My question to all is, who is the person that can "make" the ATF approve?hinking.gif

Quoted: ... My question to all is, who is the person that can "make" the ATF approve?

Probably a federal judge.    I was waiting on submitting a form 1 to manufacture a silencer, but I think I'm just going submit it and hold the money in the bank for the check until it happens.

Bustoff and others who continue to work on this, you guys deserve a big thumbs up.

We have a letter of clarification in to the AG I believe. If we have to do a formal AG Opinion request it will take a few months. I would be contacting my progun Congress person and start asking why ATF is scewing everybody. Right now the law is clear period, The Kelly letter to Price is valid and says licensed persons may possess mg's silencers etc.

It is clear to me that Michigan persons are to be treated as our counterparts in other states. But foremost we should be treated as licensed dealers with the exception that we can not operate as a dealer or transfer pre or post dealer samples or sbr sbs.

Looks like we need to prod our Congressman telling them the law was misinterpreted under an old mg opinion and has been replaced with an opinion that allows us to aquire nfa items and I would be attaching both AG opinion 5210 marking it with superseded, sending 7183 with it, send a copy of MCL 750.224 and attach Kelly letter to Chief Price. That should do it along with a letter briefly explaining how the law works and ATF is failing their duty's.

This was handed out to our shift during roll call today, according to the Oakland Co. Prosecutor's office:  

"Attorney General Cox ruled that a person in Michigan may only possess a machine gun if it was lawfully possessed before May 19, 1986, and is properly registered under federal law.  A person in Michigan may only transfer possession of a machine gun if authorized to do so by the federal Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, Explosives."

Source:  Police Law Bulletin, Vol. 22 No. 4 / January 2006.

Does that help anyone?  

Sounds good to me, but what the heck do I know...

Quoted: This was handed out to our shift during roll call today, according to the Oakland Co. Prosecutor's office:   "Attorney General Cox ruled that a person in Michigan may only possess a machine gun if it was lawfully possessed before May 19, 1986, and is properly registered under federal law.  A person in Michigan may only transfer possession of a machine gun if authorized to do so by the federal Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, Explosives." Source:  Police Law Bulletin, Vol. 22 No. 4 / January 2006. Does that help anyone?

Sounds like a step in the right direction!  Jeff

Quoted: This was handed out to our shift during roll call today, according to the Oakland Co. Prosecutor's office:   "Attorney General Cox ruled that a person in Michigan may only possess a machine gun if it was lawfully possessed before May 19, 1986, and is properly registered under federal law.  A person in Michigan may only transfer possession of a machine gun if authorized to do so by the federal Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, Explosives." Source:  Police Law Bulletin, Vol. 22 No. 4 / January 2006. Does that help anyone?

MSP who?