Armory Sponsor
Posted: 7/18/2006 5:13:46 PM EDT
| Why is it $200 to register an AOW but only $5 to transfer it? Why doesn't that apply to all of the other NFA stuff? |
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I don't have time to research it right now, but my aging brain cells seem to think the history went like this: --When the National Firearms Act was passed in 1934, everything was $200 to make and $200 to transfer. --At the time, AOWs were primarily items like cane guns and other "novelty" items -- stuff that Congress felt should be regulated, but not as "scary" as machine guns or sawed-off shotguns. --A few years later, Congress decided to recognize this "offensive use" difference -- probably because half the members of Congress had walking-stick guns -- and reduced the transfer fee for AOWs to $5, so they could swap 'em with their buddies. As far as the manufacturing tax, I guess they did not think $200 was prohibitive there. No way to know their reasoning, really, as the decision-makers are long dead now. --Years after that, someone reading the regs and relevant firearms definitions realized that an SBS had to have been built originally as a shoulder-fired weapon, and that chopping a factory-pistol-gripped shotgun did not meet the federal defintion of an SBS. It was still NFA-ish enough, though, that it had to get stuck in some NFA category, and rather than rewrite the federal definition of an SBS, they just put it in the catch-all, "stuff-that-scares-us-enough-to-require-registration" category of Any Other Weapon. A similar strange result of the precise NFA firearms definitions is the sub-18"-barrelled combination shotgun/rifle. Since it is neither rifle (it has a smoothbore barrel) nor a shotgun (one barrel is rifled), when you chop it down it also becomes an AOW -- and it can still have a buttstock. Anyone got a Savage 24 they want to chop? 
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I remember reading somewhere that someone (successfully) testified that AOW items had 'legitimate sporting purposes' or somesuch, and thus they dropped the tax to $1.00. Then it rose to $5.00, where it has sat until this day. Still a $200.00 making tax, though.  Savage 24? Naaaaw. I want a stainless Springfield M6 Scout .22lr/.410!  Mike |
You might be right about the $200 to $1 to $5 sequence -- my memory's pretty rusty on this one. In a Perfect World, the transfer tax on all NFA would be $5, or $1. Somehow I suspect that if the issue is ever raised in Congress, the price tag will go way higher than today's rates.
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Oh, I know I am-- I have an original $1.00 NFA stamp and was driven to research until I learned why such a thing existed! It used to be the case that AOWs also had to have at least a 12" barrel length. Thus, the 8" version of the H&R Handy Gun was a SBS ($200) while the 12" variant was an AOW. They finally just made them all AOWs (barring smooth bore shoulder stocked variants, which remain SBS to this day) but raised the tax to $5.00. I want to say this happened in 1954 or 1958, but I always forget which..... Mike |
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