The FRT-15 vs ATF stand-off brings be great joy. Because the fine folk at Rare Breed just essentially said, “yeah, no.” when the ATF field office in Florida said “No guys, that’s totally a machine gun.”
It isn’t, by the mechanical definitions and the laws of physics it isn’t. It produces a similar result, and it flagrantly ruffles ATF and administration feathers, and its name is the fart fifteen, all of which is glorious, but the mechanics are semi-auto. It has a mechanically assisted reset but each trigger pull is distinct. It is artificially Jerry Miculek’s trigger finger, not an auto sear and disconnector setup that will safely cycle the gun as long as the trigger is held.
Words mean things. Physics are laws more exacting than anything man has made. Just because an engineer found a way to produce a similar result but technically different doesn’t mean one thing is suddenly another. It just means, perhaps your rule is silly.
Caleb and I talk about it, because we love these shenanigans and people putting the ATF’s vague rulebooking into check.
That said, not everyone at the ATF is a raging anti-gun tyrant (but Chipman, keep opposing that asshat), and most of them are just as frustrated with the amount of ‘interpretation’ they are required to exercise. That alone means that someone else can instantly undo an investigation or a decision they have made with one that they made later. It is tragic to hear the absolute frustration at the other end of the line as all they can offer is a vague suggestion.
