922r

My buddy the gun enthusiast bought a CX4 from Beretta to compliment his Beretta pistol. Both use the same caliber and magazines.

He wants to upgrade the CX4. He could easily transfer the silencer can from his pistol to his new carbine, so he is investigating paying a gunsmith to thread the barrel on the CX4.

Uh-oh. He runs afoul of reg 18 USC 922r.

What is that? Heck if I know, All I know about it is, if you buy something furren and change it, you run afould of John Law. If I were to get an AK for whatever GAWDAWFUL reason, I know enough to leave it stock. 922r is a goofy regulation where a certain number of parts of a rifle have to be domestic or it all has to be import… Heck it’s hard to grok. And I haven't bothered because I am not in the market for imports that I then want to modify.

What was the purpose of 922r? Well, one thing it did was help prop up domestic firearm makers by restricting the inflow of cheap imported guns. Chinese AKs could have been had for a double sawbuck, the way things were going. Well, actually, I think ANOTHER regulation (925(d)(3) ) said you couldn't import a certain subset of non-sporting furren guns, and 922r is how you can if you can make those guns more Muhrikin. Like I said, it's complicated, and I'd personally not like to delve too deep into it unless I want to get an AK or somesuch.

The reg plays HELL with people that want to customize their commie gun, but also applies to the CX4 Italian jobber of MBtGE. Somehow.

He can do it, get it threaded to take his silencer, but he has 2 options to keep it compliant. He can buy $416 worth of domestic parts to make it a domestic gun, or he can spend $200 to get an ATF tax stamp and make it a SBR (short barreled rifle) and 922r no longer applies. No brainer. He’s going SBR.

Heck at that rate he might as well get a whole new second suppressor for another $200 tax stamp. Better than spending $416 to ‘get’ nothing new. Spend $400 and be allowed to have a govvie approved silencer. Well, plus the expense of a suppressor and the work to get the barrel threaded.g

None of this would be a problem if he has bought a CX4 manufactured at the Beretta plant in the Great State Of Maryland, (the Free State!!) instead of one manufactured in Italy. Only one flaw in my thinking. The Maryland factory doesn’t make CX4s that MBtGE wanted to buy. Word on the street was the quality of domestic CX4s wasn't as good. But now he has to pay. Why it works that way is beyond me and is part and parcel of the vagaries of odd and confusing gun laws.