Thursday, June 23, 2011

Speaking of 454 Casull

... and esoteric shooting irons...

What are the legalities of the .600 nitro revolver?  What interest would the ATF take?

First, the elephant gun round is bigger than .5 inches.  So is .600 a tax stampable round?  You could definitely argue its sporting purpose.  And its existence predates the 1934 National Firearms Act by 30 years, so they knew about it.  So is it like a 10 gauge shotgun round for these purposes, and not subject to a $200 tax stamp per cartridge...

Well, if it IS considered a shotgun round, would that mean the revolver that fires it is a sawed off shotgun or some kind of destructive device?  They are having enough problems getting revolvers approved that shoot something bigger than .410.

Even when you WANT to obey the law on firearms regulations you can run into some serious weirdness without even trying.  And this is just a mental exercise.  I bet if I asked 4 different expert bureaucrats I'd get 5 different answers.

2 comments:

Daniel E. Watters said...

The cartridge itself is fine as long as the projectile does not have an explosive charge. The rifles for these big bore rounds tend to get a pass under the sporting use clause as long as they are conventional single-shot or double-barrel models. The moment you try to make a repeating firearm for the same cartridge, they will hit you with a Destructive Device classification.

Bubblehead Les. said...

I don't know about the BATFEIEIO rules, but something tells me that any injuries caused to one's self by shooting that thing will NOT be covered by Obamacare.