Originally Posted by ldholton
Originally Posted by TheLastLemming76
Originally Posted by hookeye
Originally Posted by ldholton
Originally Posted by gunswizard
Local guy was building AR's from Palmetto lowers, last week the ATF swept in unannounced and seized 500 of them. Broke into his house when he wasn't home, demanded the combinations to his safes or they'd take the cutting torch to them. Left a stack of paperwork explaining the charges and how they'd return the guns.
Sounds like he was busted for "manufacturing" ....

If the lowers complete how could he be busted for manufacturing?

The " gun " is done

Assembling and or selling outside of the law is what he proly got nailed for.

My guess is his stuff was in SBR config or he did straw.
It wouldn’t need to be in SBR configuration. I obviously disagree with the “law” but if he were selling them without an FFL in that quantity he was probably raided for being a dealer without an FFL.
A friend of mine that was an FFL dealer and also a competitive benchrest guy and a very good Machinist. But by just a basic 700 ADL clean up the action rebarrel it drop it in a McMillan stock shoot some matches with it. And he would price anything. And he sold it sold a few of them that way even though it was just strictly within the hobby of the bench matches. ATF one day on one of their checks on dealers seen some barrels and such and highly recommended he not do that no more that he could get in trouble for manufacturing.
I think I remember those regs coming under Obama. The atf redefined what it meant to be a gunsmith. As you said anyone that does nearly any work on a firearm is a “smith” and needs to be licensed/taxed ect.