The Sputter Gun was a prototype test gun using 7 major components from the WW2 era
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
Sten
The STEN (or Sten gun) is a family of British submachine guns chambered in 9×19mm which were used extensively by British and Commonwealth forces throughout World War II and the Korean War. They had a simple design and very low production cos ...
submachine gun carbine, along with other specially fabricated parts to make a complete operational firearm. It was designed to circumvent the existing U.S. Federal law defining a
machine gun
A machine gun is a fully automatic, rifled autoloading firearm designed for sustained direct fire with rifle cartridges. Other automatic firearms such as automatic shotguns and automatic rifles (including assault rifles and battle rifles) ar ...
. The Sputter Gun, lacking any
trigger, was designed to fire multiple rounds automatically, upon release of the bolt from its safety slot, until all
ammunition was expended from the magazine. The Sputter Gun has never been classified as a machine gun by the
ATF Firearms Technical Branch. Previous references to this in public records are in error or without substantiation.
Background
In 1983, the ATF became aware that, William M. York, doing business as York Arms Co., was offering for sale a version of a
Mk.II Sten that was capable of fully automatic fire that did not meet the Federal definition as a machine gun. York advertised the “Sputter Gun” (so named by his attorney friend Ron Boutwell) as a firearm for those "who want the fun and excitement of owning and firing a fully automatic firearm without the government tax and red tape." A then employee, Chuck Lanum, of the ATF Firearms Technology Branch (FTB) in Wash. D.C. made a scheduled personal visit to the York Arms Co. in Hurricane, Utah, to inspect and discuss some of the Sten based firearms the company was manufacturing under their Class 2 FFL issued by the ATF. York had in attendance at this meeting with Lanum both an attorney and a court reporter. During that meeting Lanum offered his opinion that the Sputter Gun might be considered a “machine gun” under Federal law if a person's finger could be considered the “trigger” of the firearm. Lanum's opinion was scoffed at by all other's at the meeting and that opinion has never been again uttered or heard by anybody else at the meeting or from anybody else from the Federal Government.
[BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SPUTTER GUN as told by William M. York (2023)]
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Classification
The Sputter Gun has never been classified or reclassified as a Machine Gun by ATF or any other organization of the Federal Government and thus has never been "outlawed."
The US Congress defined a machine gun in the 1934 National Firearms Act
The National Firearms Act (NFA), 73rd Congress, Sess. 2, ch. 757, was enacted on June 26, 1934, and currently codified and amended as . The law is an Act of Congress in the United States that, in general, imposes an excise tax on the manufact ...
["U.S.C. Title 26 § 5845 Definitions" U.S. Government Publishing Office. ]
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...any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.
In spite of assertions by ATF or others this legal definition has never been changed by any Ruling or Congress and still stands as Federal law.
See also
* Gun politics in the United States
*Firearm action
In firearms terminology, an action is the functional mechanism of a breech-loading firearm that handles (loads, locks, fires, extracts and ejects) the ammunition cartridges, or the method by which that mechanism works. Actions are technically n ...
References
9mm Parabellum submachine guns
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