How can you have a 12ga with a 14″ barrel but not have it be an NFA-regulated Short Barreled Shotgun? And how can you have a .410 shotgun-firing pistol that isn’t an NFA-regulated Any Other Weapon?
How can you have a 12ga with a 14″ barrel but not have it be an NFA-regulated Short Barreled Shotgun? And how can you have a .410 shotgun-firing pistol that isn’t an NFA-regulated Any Other Weapon?
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See, here’s the thing: Just like how the “Internet routes around failure…”, the real world works just like that. It may take time, but legislative/regulatory stupidity will eventually be routed around.
The real world works exactly like this, in every respect. The timeline will vary, but there ya go: Stupidity and dysfunction will be “routed around”, and there you go. You’ll wind up exactly where you started, just like the way language demonstrates the same principle with regards to the so-called “euphemism treadmill”.
Observe the never-ending attempts in the UK to “stop violence”. They focused on the tools, rather than the actual problems, the persons using those tools. They started out with firearms, moved on to knives, and will shortly be mandating padded surfaces everywhere and a ban on caustic/acidic chemicals. I’m morally certain that at some point in the likely not-to-distant future, you’ll see the UK banning spray bottles that might be used to deploy said chemicals, and… It’ll never end.
The real problem with all of this attempting to legislate “non-violence” is that it never addresses the real problem: The people involved. You want to know why the Swiss have a low crime rate? The weapons have nothing to do with that… It’s all down to the Swiss having a low propensity towards violence, period.
It’s the people, stupid…
Something that the usual numpties don’t seem to understand. If I decide I absolutely positively have to kill someone, right now? Lack of a weapon ain’t going to stop me; if I have to, I’ll rip that marshmallow padding off the wall and use it to asphyxiate them by stuffing it down their throat. Or, I’ll do any one of the other thousand things I could think of, in order to do the necessary. There are no such things as “dangerous objects”, only dangerous minds. The childish attempt to control said minds by depriving them of objects will never work, in the long run.
Also, doesn’t work over the short run, either.
I agree. But the real life work-arounds leave one in an increasingly cramped position. The UK will have everyone eating oatmeal three times a day if that’s what it takes to ban knives. Worse, psychologically people become incapable of initiative. You see murder victims’ parents apologizing for having killers arrested. The end game is state-mandated chaos where the legacy demographic vanishes into the chaos-mongers. Apparently this is something the rulers accept: gated communities for the few and the rest of society as sociology lab for tweaking humanoid “Stoff.” The issue isn’t stopping violence, it is ensuring a monopoly on power for who holds the reins now. To that degree “idiotic” laws are preminently successful.
Were I able to speak to the “body politic” that’s currently running the UK… As though there were an anthropomorphic personification of such a thing?
I would advise that entity that they should have been a bit more cautious about their “planning”, because while I think a great deal of the native “cussedness” in the majority ethnic populations of the British Isles may well have “boiled off” into the various colonies… There is still the fact that an awful lot of it stayed put, and is still there, lurking under the surface. The UK may represent what one can do to try and deracinate a population and domesticate it, but I’d first point out that when hogs go feral, it is usually within a single generation, and then you’re dealing with some serious swine. Humans are no different; scrape off the thin veneer of civilization, and you’re going to be discovering just why so many native British sorts so easily went into piracy and theft during the “Age of Discovery”.
I think they’ve got a few years yet to really convince the average Briton that what they’re doing is in their best interests, and if they don’t manage that…? It will be a very ugly place for the likes of Starmer and his ilk. Not to mention, all the immigrant sorts that were invited in. One would do well to remember that the nicely-nice fairy tales that the Brits told themselves back during the bad old days of Empire were pretty much just that: Fairy tales. Who, after all, actually invented the concentration camp and then put Boer women and children into them…?
The funny thing all the idjit types around the world manage to forget is that the Nazis were merely copycats: The actual ideas that they implemented were ones that they learned from the US and the UK, and a lot of those were things that even the Nazis thought that they’d never be able to get away with, in Europe. See, for example, Margaret Sanger’s ideas…
Something that the assholes prosecuting at Nuremberg sort of forgot all about, along with all the examples of “eugenics” implemented across Europe when it was all quite fashionable. And, which continued into the 1970s, in all too many “civilized” nations.
It’ll all end in tears, as usual.
All attempts at “social engineering on the cheap” tend to end that way. “Weapon Control” is always and ever about protecting government from the people, not “public safety”.
The “root cause” of the violence in UK was the same as it was here. The progressives imported a huge mass of people from Third World countries whom they were sure would vote progressive in every election, thus insuring unchallenged progressive political power forever.
Where it backfired was that when you import such a mass of people, you also import their culture. Insular, tribalist, and prone to violent criminal behavior.
When that s#!tstorm broke in the UK, just as it did here, the reflex reaction was to blame anybody who pointed it out as a (Fill In The Blank)phobe. Anything to avoid admitting what a massive miscalculation the whole mess had been from the beginning.
As for the “voting” part, London, New York City, and Minneapolis are now experiencing what the enlightened types should have expected. Their best and brightest being pushed aside as the “new voters” put their own candidates in the treasured positions that were supposed to belong to the progressives forever.
Expect more nonsensically Draconian laws in the UK, and yes over here too. As progressives in both places try desperately to find the magic combination that will cause the Heavens to split open and the Golden Unicorn to come prancing down a beam of light from Nirvana, bearing Utopia on its horn like a jelly doughnut with sprinkles.
The rest of us aren’t holding our breath waiting.
clear ether
eon
Kirk:
In Britain our governments have imported millions of people from the third world who behave as if… they are still in the third world.
The government finds that these people kill each other, and regular people, without compunction. So they ban ownership of various types of knives, and swords, and it makes no difference. How can it? Britain was once a homogenous European country. Now it is anything but. It never seems to occur to government that if you change the people, you don’t have the same country any more. The white British population of London at the last census, 2021, was 36.8%. Guess what? It feels like it. Government’s solution? Maybe we don’t need to have a census any more! Because if you don’t measure the problem it will just go away. Genius.
This all relates to the social side of weapons, so I think it’s relevant. Weapons reflect the people who design, procure, and use them a lot more than the average person thinks. They’re also artifacts of human culture; examine the Okinawan range of martial arts weapons, all of which had to be derived from agricultural implements due to their Japanese feudal overlords denying the local peasantry the means to resist their abuses. You ban swords; you get tonfas, sais, and kamas in their place. You also piss off the downtrodden you force into these things…
The “authorities” thus find themselves cast in the role of King Canute, ordering the tide to cease and desist. It doesn’t work, and the reality denial demonstrated by that sort of authoritarial behavior never quite seems to get through to them, until the “revolution comes” and they’re going up against the wall or being dragged about on tumbrels.
Raw fact? You cannot legislate human behavior. We’ve been picking up carefully selected rocks and hurling them at our enemies since the dawn of the species, when we came down from the trees onto the savanna. You’re not going to change that, absent somehow managing the feat of engineering a “New Man” that’s more ant-like than actually human, but since that’s the dream of every wannabe aristo since forever, I don’t see it changing. Control freaks are gonna seek control, despite all evidence that control just ain’t attainable.
Weapons are a permanent part of the human psyche: Get used to that. Ban one thing, watch the monkey find the sixth way to kill you, after you eliminated the five you could figure out for yourself…
Hell, there are probably another dozen ways to kill, past that easy first five or so.
It is amusing to watch these idiots flail about, trying to square the circle in an attempt to overcome nature. It’s like watching some hypothetical beaver culture that decided to ban the building of dams and the gnawing of trees; it simply ain’t gonna work.
I agree with the overall principle, and that’s certainly what marketers want you to believe about this thing, but it’s purely a gimmick.
The “SB” NFA provisions restrict the ability to combine the advantage of a handgun’s compactness and concealability (arbitrarily defined as sub-26″ length) with a shoulder gun’s power and accuracy. Ironically, barrel length itself is a red herring.
Trading barrel length for compactness is a reasonable tradeoff for some roles or requirements. Every inch less barrel length (and velocity, energy, pattern density, and mag capacity) while still remaining 26″+ is no tradeoff at all. This has nothing over a same-length (and much more effective) 18″bbl folding-stock 870 or M500, or KSG, except spite.
USA
Thomas F. Swearengen, _The World’s Fighting Shotguns_ (Alexandria, VA: TBN Enterprises, 1978):
p. 233-34– “…With some prodding rfom police agencies, remington undertook development of a police whippit gun … a 20 gauge repeating shotgun … its now famous Model 17 Special Police Gun. … 20 gauge, five-shot weapon displaying a barrel only *15.1 inches (38.4 cm) long.* It had no buttstock. Instead, an unusual-shaped pistol grip was mounted on the rear of the receiver. This gave the gun an overall length of *25.2 inches (64 cm)* and a weight of 4.5 pounds (2kg) unloaded.
p. 238-239– “When the Model 17 production line closed down, there remained a small, persistent demand for the Police Model whipit gun. This caused remionton to develop a 20 gauge Model 31 Police Gun… the Model 31RX. It was a 20 gauge Model 31 with its barrel shortened to *14.5 inches (36.8 cm) like that of the Model 17 Police Gun. Also like the Model 17 Police Gun, the Model 31RX possessed no buttstock … Even the overall length and weight of the two guns were nearly the same …”
p. 267-69– “…the 20 gauge [Ithaca] Model 37 could be converted into near-identical copies of the old Remington Model 17 Secial Police Gun… The St. Louis, Missouri, Police Department … In 1969 … required additional special-purpose weapons to augment the 20 Remington Model17 Special Police Guns on hand. … Seargeant William J. Conreaux formulated the design, and the armory staff performed the work. Special-order, 20 gauge Model 37 guns with a sand-blasted, Parkerized finish were purchased from Ithaca. Barrels were cut to exactly 15 inches (38.1 cm), and the shoulder stock was removed … When completely assembled te guns displayed an overall length of 25.2 inches (64 cm) and weighed 4.5 pounds (2kg) unloaded. With a shell in the chamber, the guns had a capacity f five rounds. …”
The above 3 guns all require a Class III NFA application, background check, finger-print card, and payment of a $200 tax stamp… At least for now, under the 1934 NFA.
Today, however, you can go get a Mossberg 590 “shockwave” 20-gauge whipit gun with a *14.375″ barrel* and an overall length of *26.37″” and a weight of 4.95 lbs.
So there you have it. 10 years in prison if you actually install a butt stock on this here “firearm,” however. At least until Jan. 2026. Maybe thereafter too? Who knows?
Hence the phrase “Whippit out?”
I was always told that “Whippet” was an allusion to the dog, well known for speedy action and fast pursuit…
Could be wrong, though.
The Bureaucratic interpretations of the law have changed waxing and waning over the years.
Current interpretation is….
If it’s built as a pistol from the beginning it’s a pistol.
Rifle the barrel and make it a pistol such as a Rossi Brawler
The popularity of the “other” in CT follows a similar development tale.
After Sandy Hook, AR/AK/FAL type rifles were banned, and existing guns registered and grandfathered, but were not generally transferable.
To get around this, the “other” came into being.
1. Start with a receiver that was never made into a pistol or rifle.
2. Make sure overall gun is over 26”.
3. Make sure barrel and permanent muzzle device are over 12.5”
4. Make sure a 90 degree vertical foregrip is installed.
5. DO NOT install a stock.
3 and 4 are there to guarantee the gun is not a handgun (not designed to be fired one handed.
So you have not a rifle, not a shotgun, not a pistol.
An “other”.
Unfortunately, these were banned in CT in 2023. ☹️
So. Why the constant reference to the Shockwave company when it’s a Mossberg product?
I bought a Shockwave because they’re fun and because I know it made some ATF dweeb mad somewhere that they were legal.
This is not one of those anal forums with an eye of the needle sense of relevance. The one topic puts one in mind of the other
Actually the idea came from Lynn savage of historic arms who made the first one sent it to the atf got an approval letter then spend the world widely
To other class 2 people from whom the mosberg folks finally heard of it and started making the shock wave
So we have Lynn savage to thank for this breakthrough