National Firearms Act
The National Firearms Act, 73rd Congress, Sess. 2, ch. 757, was enacted on June 26, 1934, and currently codified and amended as. The law is an Act of Congress in the United States that, in general, imposes an excise tax on the manufacture and transfer of certain firearms and mandates the registration of those firearms. The NFA is also referred to as Title II of the federal firearms laws, with the Gun Control Act of 1968 as Title I.
All transfers of ownership of registered NFA firearms must be done through the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record. The NFA also requires that the permanent transport of NFA firearms across state lines by the owner must be reported to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Temporary transports of some items, most notably suppressors, do not need to be reported.
Background
The ostensible impetus for the National Firearms Act of 1934 was the gangland crime of the Prohibition era, including the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, and the attempted assassination of President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. Like the current National Firearms Act, the 1934 Act required NFA firearms to be registered and taxed. The $200 tax was quite prohibitive at the time. The tax on silencers, short-barreled shotguns, short-barreled rifles, and AOWs was reduced to $0 on January 1, 2026.Originally, pistols and revolvers were to be regulated as strictly as machine guns; towards that end, cutting down a rifle or shotgun to circumvent the handgun restrictions by making a concealable weapon was taxed as strictly as a machine gun.
Conventional pistols and revolvers were ultimately excluded from the Act before passage, but other concealable weapons were not. Regarding the definition of "firearm", the language of the statute as originally enacted was as follows:
Under the original Act, NFA weapons were machine guns, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, any other weapons, and silencers for any type of NFA or non-NFA weapon.
NFA categories have been modified by laws passed by Congress, rulings by the Department of the Treasury, and regulations promulgated by the enforcement agency assigned, known as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives or ATF.
Categories of regulated firearms
The current National Firearms Act defines a number of categories of regulated firearms. These weapons are collectively known as NFA firearms and include the following:;Machine guns: "any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger. The term shall also include the frame or receiver of any such weapon, any part designed and intended solely and exclusively, or combination of parts designed and intended, for use in converting a weapon into a machinegun, and any combination of parts from which a machinegun can be assembled if such parts are in the possession or under the control of a person."
;Short-barreled rifles : Includes any firearm with a buttstock and either a rifled barrel less than 16″ long or an overall length under 26". The overall length is measured with any folding or collapsing stocks in the extended position. The category also includes firearms which came from the factory with a buttstock that was later removed by a third party.
;Short-barreled shotguns : Similarly to SBRs, but with either a smoothbore barrel less than 18″ long or a minimum overall length under 26".
;Suppressors: The legal term for a suppressor is silencer, and includes any portable device designed to muffle or disguise the report of a portable firearm, but does not include non-portable devices, such as sound traps used by gunsmiths in their shops which are large and usually bolted to the floor.
;Destructive devices – : There are two broad classes of destructive devices:
Any other weapon (AOW)
Firearms meeting the definition of "any other weapon", or AOW, are weapons or devices that can be concealed on the person and from which a shot can be discharged by the energy of an explosive. Many AOWs are disguised devices such as pens, cigarette lighters, knives, cane guns, and umbrella guns. AOWs can be pistols and revolvers with smooth bore barrels designed or redesigned to fire a fixed shotgun shell. While the above weapons are similar in appearance to weapons made from shotguns, they were originally manufactured in the described configuration rather than modified from existing shotguns. As a result, such weapons do not fit within the definition of shotgun or weapons made from a shotgun.The AOW definition includes specifically described weapons with combination shotgun and rifle barrels 12 inches or more but less than 18 inches in length from which only a single discharge can be made from either barrel without manual reloading.
The ATF Firearms Technology Branch has issued opinions that when a pistol under 26" in overall length is fitted with a vertical fore-grip, it is no longer "designed, made and intended to fire... when held in one hand," and therefore no longer meets the definition of a pistol. Such a firearm then falls only within the definition of "any other weapon" under the NFA.
In 1938, Congress recognized that the Marble Game Getter, a short.22/.410 sporting firearm, had "legitimate use" and did not deserve the stigma of a "gangster weapon" and reduced the $200 tax to one dollar for the Game Getter. In 1960 Congress changed the transfer tax for all AOW category firearms to $5. The transfer tax for machine guns, silencers, SBR and SBS remained at $200.
Parts associated with NFA items
In general, certain components that make up an NFA item are considered as regulated. For example, the components of a silencer are considered as "silencers" by themselves and the replacement parts are regulated. However, the repair of original parts without replacement can be done by the original manufacturer, FFL gunsmith, or by the registered owner without being subjected to new registration as long as the serial number and the dimension are maintained. The length may be reduced in repair, but cannot be increased. Increasing the length is considered as making a new silencer. "Suppressor" is the term used within the trade/industry literature while the term "silencer" is the commonly used term that appears in the actual wording of the NFA. The terms are often used interchangeably depending on the source quoted.Suppressors and machine guns are the most heavily regulated. For example, in Ruling 81-4, ATF declared that any AR-15 Drop-in Auto-Sear made after November 1, 1981 is itself a machine gun, and is therefore subject to regulation. While this might seem to mean that pre-1981 sears are legal to possess without registration, ATF closes this loophole in other publications, stating,
Regardless of the date of manufacture of a drop in auto sear, possession of such a sear and certain M-16 fire control parts is possession of a machine gun as defined by the NFA. Specifically, these parts are listed as " combination of parts" designed "Solely and exclusively" for use in converting a weapon into a machine gun and are a machine gun as defined in the NFA.ATF machine gun technology letters written between 1980 and 1996 by Edward M. Owen—the then-chief of the ATF technology division defined "solely and exclusively" in all of his published and unpublished machine gun rulings with specific non-ambiguous language.
Owning for the parts needed to assemble other NFA firearms is generally restricted. One individual cannot own or manufacture certain machine gun sear components, unless, he owns a registered machine gun. The M2 carbine trigger pack is such an example of a "combination of parts" that is a machine gun in and of itself. Most of these have been registered as they were pulled from stores of surplus rifles in the early 1960s. In some special cases, exceptions have been determined to these rules by ATF. A semiautomatic firearm which could have a string or shoelace looped around the cocking handle of and then behind and in front of the trigger in such a way as to allow the firearm to be fired automatically is no longer considered a machine gun unless the string is attached in this manner.
Most current fully automatic trigger groups will not fit their semi-automatic firearm look-alike counterparts—the semi-automatic version is specifically constructed to reject the fully automatic trigger group by adding metal in critical places. This addition is required by ATF to prevent easy conversion of Title I firearms into machine guns.
For the civilian possession, all machine guns must have been manufactured and registered with ATF prior to May 19, 1986, to be transferable between citizens. These machine gun prices have drastically escalated in value, especially items like registered sears and conversion-kits. Only a Class-II manufacturer could manufacture machine guns after that date, and they can only be sold to government, law-enforcement, and military entities. Transfer can only be done to other SOT FFL-holders, and such FFL-holders must have a "demonstration letter" from a respective government agency to receive such machine guns. Falsification and/or misuse of the "demo-letter" process can and has resulted in long jail sentences and felony convictions for violators.
Owning both a short barrel and a legal-length rifle could be construed as intent to build an illegal, unregistered SBR. This possibility was contested and won in the U.S. Supreme Court case of United States v. Thompson-Center Arms Company. ATF lost the case, and was unable to prove that possession of a short barrel for the specific pistol configuration of a Thompson Contender is illegal. ATF later released ruling 2011-4 to clarify the legal status of owning such conversion kits.
Removal of a weapon from classification as an NFA firearm, such as the reclassification of the original Broomhandle Mauser with shoulder stock from "short barrel rifle" to a curio or relic handgun, changed its status as a Title II NFA firearm but did not change its status as a Title I Gun Control Act firearm.
Muzzle-loading firearms are exempt from the Act. Thus, though common muzzle-loading hunting rifles are available in calibers over 0.50 inch, they are not regulated as destructive devices. Muzzle-loading cannon are similarly exempt since the law makes no distinction about the size of muzzle-loading weapons. Thus it is legal for a civilian to build muzzle-loading rifles, pistols, cannon, and mortars with no paperwork. However, ammunition for these weapons can still be classified as destructive devices themselves, such as explosive shells. While an 'antique firearm' is not considered a 'firearm' under the NFA, some states have laws that specifically prohibit anyone that could not otherwise own/obtain an GCA or NFA defined 'firearm' from owning/obtaining an 'antique firearm'.
Individuals or companies seeking to market large-bore firearms may apply to ATF for a "sporting clause exception". If granted, ATF acknowledges that the firearm has a legitimate sporting use and is therefore not a destructive device. Certain large safari rifle calibers, such as.585 Nyati and.577 Tyrannosaur, have such exceptions. In addition to the sporting use exception, certain firearms that would otherwise be regulated under the NFA as a destructive device, can be exempt from being an NFA item, if it is listed by the ATF as being an antique, or a collectors item as a curious or relic; for example the.600 Nitro Express is exempt from NFA registration as a destructive device as it is on the ATF's curios and relics list. However, firearms that are ONLY listed as a collectors item under the curios or relic status are still regulated as a firearm under Title I of the GCA and require a background check and a Form 4477, or a valid type 03 Collector of Curios and Relics FFL. While items that also classify as an antique are not regulated as firearms under the GCA or NFA, and don't require a background check or an FFL; although machine guns and certain AOW's classified as curios or relics are still regulated under Title I & Title II of the GCA and the NFA.
The phrase "all NFA rules apply" is commonplace. This disclaimer is usually posted in bold print from firearm dealers holding an FFL license.