May 5th, 2009
Sebastian on the denial of an appeal in the Olofson case:
What it boils down to is that if you have a firearm that fires more than one round per single pull of the trigger, and you know it does this, you need to take it to a gunsmith and get it fixed pronto, because by the strict legal definition, you are in possession of a machine gun.
May 6th, 2009 at 2:21 am
I guess it only applies to someone knowingly transferring such a malfunctioning weapon, but it is still disconcerting. That’s my read though, but I am a few beers into my evening.
A friend of mine had a trigger job done on his mini-14 at a local gunsmith. When he got it back he found that about half the time it would shoot two rounds with each trigger pull. From what we could tell it was a case of a really sensitive trigger break point and his slow consistent trigger pull. He was holding his finger at the break point, and the recoil was resetting the hammer, followed by the gun settling in his grip which broke the sear. AKA it bump fired. But it’s kind of scary to think of an over zealous prosecutor using that as grounds to incarcerate you. He’s since had it fixed, not good having a gun that does things you don’t tell it to do. Fortunately we were shooting an a safe secluded (and legal) spot in the National Forrest so there were no gubment types about.