Michigan’s SB 610 has passed both the House (103-6) and the Senate (36-2), and is now headed to Governor Rick Snyder’s desk. The measure will end nearly a hundred years of a pointless ban on the possession of short barreled rifles and shotguns. According to the Coalition for Responsible Gun Owners’ Facebook page, “…Governor Snyder has indicated he will sign SB 610. The bill will have immediate effect upon his signature.” How historic is this? It has been suggested that the Michigan ban served as the template for the regulation and taxes on short barreled rifles and shotguns that became the National Firearms Act of 1934. Michigan’s ban was passed in 1931 . . .
This new law defers to the 1934 Federal law as it exists now, allowing possession of the short barreled rifles and shotguns, only if registered under the NFA with appropriate taxes paid.
In 1931, Michigan had only recently required police permission to buy pistols. It has been argued that this was in response to the successful defense of his household by Dr. Ossian Sweet. The removal of the Michigan ban is part of a trend to repeal these obsolete infringements on the Second Amendment. The next logical step would be the removal of the excessive federal regulation and taxation on short barreled rifles and shotguns, but that doesn’t seem likely any time soon.
©2014 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
Gun Watch
I think in my life time, maybe even soon we will see items being taken of the NFA list.
I hope so. But probably not while a Progressive is in the White House. Let’s hope we have elected our last Prog president.
Let this be a lesson — and inspiration — to the gun rights activists who keep preaching “gloom and doom”.
Michigan has consistently voted for Democracts in Washington D.C. (Senators, most Presidents, and several Representatives) for how many decades? And yet the state House and Senate passed yet another law rolling back gun control. While that is significant, what is even more significant is the actual voting tally: the votes to repeal the ban of short barreled rifles and shotguns was nearly unanimous in a state that loves sending Democrats to Washington D.C.
I recognize that the political situation is atrocious in certain areas (coastal California, Cook County Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Connecticut, etc.), but I am telling you that the population in the rest of the nation is waking up by the millions and demanding that state and federal government recognize and restore our rights.
We need to keep up the momentum and working in ways that are effective. Keep in mind that different actions are effective in different areas. Our job, collectively, is to figure out what is effective in a given area and then do it relentlessly.
You know that part in a gun rights debate when the grabber puts on their reading glasses and pulls out the binder full of laws they would like pass? That’s the queue to pull out your wish list with the SBRs and suppressors. Nothing on this Earth is funnier than the disgusted face of a liberal who has just realized you actually expect him to compromise.
I’m incredibly shocked that Snyder has said he will sign. Definitely not the greatest supporter of 2A we’ve ever had….
I hear so many people bitch about Snyder, you’d rather go back to the “glory days” of Jenny From The Block? I’m good getting 75-80% of what I want out of the Nerd Gov, rather than 100% of NOTHING coming from anyone Democrat Governor.
I’ll take most of a pie and be happy rather than getting no pie and then bitching about it endlessly. Then again, I’m a rational adult.
Snyder beats Granholm on a lot of fronts (and Engler on so many, many more) but even Jenny has him beat on guns.
Jennifer Granholm signed Michigan’s Stand Your Ground law into effect in 2006.
Earlier than that, as AG, she released an opinion that a holster != concealed.
As far as I know the only thing Snyder has done for gun owners to date is sign a bill repealing the permit to purchase a handgun. And he ONLY did that after the original bill was heavily modified. The original bill as it passed the house (and likely would have passed the senate) would have eliminated the hand gun registry completely. He went on record at the time stating he WOULD NOT sign the repeal of the registry.
At the time Sandy Hook happened there was something like 10 pro gun bills coming down the chute. Once they made it to him the repeal of the permit to purchase was the ONLY one he signed.
Yay, good for us.
Agreed with Eric. Snyder’s only black mark in my opinion was vetoing the enhanced CPL, and honestly I understand him doing so. Snyder honestly seems indifferent to the gun rights issue, and while leaning toward individual freedom in general I can see him getting caught up on the post-Sandy Hook emotional storm and caving in to people complaining about ‘OMG GUNZ IN SCHOOLZ!’ in the heat of the moment. I wish he had taken the time to address the arguments instead of caving, but it isn’t like he is crusading against our rights or letting us backslide.
I can open carry in all of those places anyways with my regular CPL, so the law being vetoed wasn’t too awful. Heck, people see a nicely dressed guy with a pistol on his hip and they tend to assume you’re LEO anyways. I’ve not yet had a problem.
We could do much worse than Snyder. Just look back a few years.
he signed the registration bill which streamlined it and made it better, he said if it would have came to his desk to repeal the whole thing he would have signed it.
he did not sign the less pfz list that also banned open carry….make no mistake, this was a pro gun control bill! it required more fees and licensing to carry in places that one with a cpl could already carry in! it also codified open carry in those zones as unlawful, which would have been the first time in michigan history that open carry would have been codified as unlawful. contrary to popular belief, it was NOT a pro gun bill….it was a pro gun control bill!
and this bill…..even the anti gun democrats in the state are mostly supportive of it, it gives them some pro gun cred to use in the elections so they think it will help them keep their seat, while it doesnt really do anything the anti gun groups can use to berate them…in fact some of the groups told the democrats to support it to make them look more appeasing to fence sitters.
either way, the governor is not exactly anti gun…
Snyder’s name pops up in article speculating on 2016 presidential candidates. This seems like a very modest bill with niche impact and appeal. So it seems more like he’s just signing something to hang his 2A hat on, rather than truly working to expand firearms freedom.
I’ll take what I can get, though, and congratulate Michigan on this step. However, this doesn’t move the needle by any discernible measure any potential support for a White House run by Snyder.
Honestly I think repeal of the NFA is within our grasp, or perhaps updating it to meet the 21st century. The onerous need for LEO sign-off and personal review by ATF agents reflects the technology of the age in which the legislation was passed, before easy collection and transmission of data was possible. I think an update to the NFA that would allow an NICS background check to be performed instead of the months-long backlog created by human oversight and signatures would be a reasonable step.
Michigan has always been a little confusing, especially with the whole “Michigan Pistol” work-around.
For example… a few years back I bought a Sig Sauer 556p.
At the time I bought it, it was sold as a “pistol”. But… if I add a collapsible stock to it, it’s then considered a SBR and I need a special license.
Crazy
Eric,
Looking solely at the gun issue, Jenny signed stand your ground, and released opinions as AG saying open carry isn’t brandishing and that you can open carry in pistol free zones as they only apply to CCW.
She’s done way More for gun owners than Snyder who said he doesn’t like guns and thinks that people have too many guns.
Snyder is backing off a bit due to it being election year but he is anti gun and has told Senators to not put gun reform bills on his desk.
I have a lot of friends that will be out big money once this goes through, if you know what I mean.
I doubt the NFA will ever be abolished. I do not believe anyone in the Fed Gov’t, regardless of political party, will give up such a lucrative tax revenue.
I guarantee they would make more taxable “revenues” (I hate that word in the context of taxation) if the NFA was amended so that you could freely buy SBS, SBR, and suppressors in store with nothing more than a NICS check, but an additional $50 tax or so was tacked on to enter the firearm into the NFA.
Of course I would much rather see the NFA completely erradicated, but leftists are always talking about “compromise,” so if they won’t “compromise” by abolishing the NFA in exchange for something like UBCs, perhaps they can just modernize the damn thing.
As the $200 “fee” has not changed you can bet that today it costs the overpaid the dimwits at ATF more than $200 to “process” a transfer. Taking months is not free you know.
ive got money for a few tax stamps that i intend to go for as soon as he signs it.
got a 500 i want to sbs, id like to sbr my AR and i think while im going to order a suppressor.
I’m curio how long our NFA stamps will take once this gets signed….I imagine there are a lot of people that will be filing.
id bet 9-12 months but now you have a bunch of people filing for trusts because the cleo’s wont sign off, many of us have them because of the suppressors re-legalized a few years ago but not all of us.
so for existing trusts id say 9-12 months, 4-6 if filed electronically, same if they can get a cleo signature, if they have to file a new trust add a month for that and then the regular filing time.
My buddy, a dentist in WI, just got a 9″ Daniel Defense 300 AAC pistol. He’s going to get a suppressor for it, and may turn it into an SBR as well. In CA, I can’t have a suppressor or an SBR. Heck, I probably got a free background check when I purchased my BATFE – inspected Ares Armor T shirt.
You can have a AR pistol.
It just first has to be sold as a single shot pistol, then you can modify it to accept a ten round magazine.
Yes, that takes all of 20 minutes, and it would take another 20 minutes to convert it to a SBR (at most) but the people who write the laws don’t understand firearms.
@Xanthro,
I may get an AR pistol with the brace – it’s “SBR-esque.” I can get around some of the single shot sled shenanigans with an AR-pistol built from an 80% lower. Next on my gun checklist are a scope for my .338 (probably a Bushnell ERS with TRMR 2), a 300 AAC upper, and a Smith M&P in 9mm. Subject to change, of course.
Cook County,Illinois IS getting better. Several new gun ranges, new gun shops, MANY new gun owners, concealed carry too. Lots of positive change, despite being controlled by Dumbocrats. I have more firearm freedom than California, Maryland,NYC, Connecticut, Massachusetts, D.C. I can buy an AR. No gun registration. I can buy any hicap semi auto in Indiana & transfer it to Will Co. Illinois. I can easily avoid the $25 Cook County,Illinois slush fund tax. Anyway lots of good things happening.
To call this law obsolete implies that at one time it was needed.
Good and bad.
Good for them, they can now get more stuff!
Bad for the waiting list thru Batfe.
Can’t any criminal turn a $100 used 12 ga. shotgun into a short barrel version with nothing more than a five dollar hacksaw from Home Depot?
SBR restrictions have to be one of the most, if not the most, laughably ludicrous firearms regulations out there, and there are many.
I was interested to see the illustration of the A.J. Aubrey shotgun. My father had one, which I inherited after his death in 1998. I only saw him fire it once; when I was about 12 I had gotten my first gun, a Sears mail-order .410 single-shot bolt action. He took me out to show me how to hunt pheasant. A rooster got up and he knocked it down, despite not having wingshot in decades, probably.
I tried to find out more about it after I got the thing. This was pre-Google and pre-internet and I wasn’t able to learn much. After seeing the illustration above, I did the Google thing just now and learned all I needed to know. The gun is long gone; one firing pin was broken and I gave it to a friend as a wall hanger years ago. Thanks to Google, I now know it probably wasn’t worth a double sawbuck.
“Michigan Coalition for Responsible Gun Owners” sounded like the Orwellian name for a gun control group until I checked their FB page…
I wrote my state rep and senator and asked them to approve this piece of legislation. Feels good to see it passed.
Incidentally, I brought up the confusing aspects of the CPL law (CPL holders being allowed to only open carry in places where open carry people can’t carry at all). He agreed with me, explained that he was a CPL holder himself, and was working with other reps to get those changes made down the road. My rep is Marc Jansen. I’ve been very happy with his 2A voting record thus far.