One of ways the ATF defines a firearm is "any weapon that can be converted to expel a projectile using an explosive."
If you don't WANT it to be considered a firearm maybe it's sufficiently corroded such that it's no longer true that it could expel a projectile using an explosive, and therefore is no longer a firearm. In that case, if you hit someone with it, it goes back to being an armament, but no longer a firearm.
That is of course unless you melt the metal down and turn it into some kind of lower receiver. It would go back to being considered a firearm by the ATF.
Whether or not it's a firearm depends on your context. If you and all your friends disagree it's a firearm, in that context it is not. In other contexts it is.
Words are really just illusions though. It's equally true that there are no firearms, because firearms are just words. It also is true that any and all matter is a few steps away from being a firearm. Where do you end and I begin? If we get quantum mechanics into it, maybe everything already is a firearm.
> (3) The term “firearm” means (A) any weapon (including a starter gun) which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive; (B) the frame or receiver of any such weapon; (C) any firearm muffler or firearm silencer; or (D) any destructive device. Such term does not include an antique firearm.
according to the law antique firearms are not firearms.
That’s an incredibly biased reading of that. It’s the gun + 14” of shoe string attached to the trigger enabling automatic fire that’s the machine gun not the string on its own.
No, this 2004 letter specifies that the string with loops on its own, because it was designed to be used to modify a rifle to fire automatically, was a machinegun.
Three years later, in 2007 the ATF decided differently, "Upon further review, we have determined that the string by itself is not a machinegun..."
Not on drugs, I just happened to read the Perfection of Wisdom Text that Cuts Like a Thunderbolt a few years ago and I guess parts of it really stuck with me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> Was this for an individual, or is it a crew served weapon?
FTA: “Sometimes referred to as a wall gun, the unearthed cannon was an early type of firearm requiring two people to operate. Designed primarily for use along fortification walls, the expedition reportedly utilized them as an offensive weapon to breach wooden or light adobe walls of domestic dwellings in the cities they encountered.”
It is. The US defines a firearm as "Any weapon... which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive" and definitions in other countries are similar. Both a pistol and a ship-mounted cannon are firearms.
Yes for all senses of the word. Moreover, first firearms were really hand cannons on a stick. Look at the picture in the article, it was a rifle-sized weapon mounted on a swivel.
