HEH: Look What the Clever Bastards at Franklin Armory Did to the ATF.

Under US law, a short-barreled rifle is “a rifle having one or more barrels less than sixteen inches in length and any weapon made from a rifle (whether by alteration, modification, or otherwise) if such weapon, as modified, has an overall length of less than twenty-six inches”.

Ok, and what is a rifle? It is (emphasis added) “a weapon designed or redesigned, made or remade, and intended to be fired from the shoulder and designed or redesigned and made or remade to use the energy of an explosive to fire only a single projectile through a rifled bore for each single pull of the trigger”.

Last Thursday, the mad scientists at Franklin Armory launched the Antithesis. It is, as far as we can tell, a bog-standard AR-15 that comes in 7.5-12.5” barrel configurations.

One day later, Franklin Armory pulled the Antithesis off their site under threat from the ATF. Here’s what happened.

Franklin Armory noticed the bold section in the definition of “rifle” above. They built an Antithesis that, like well-known combination guns such as the Taurus Judge, fires both .45 Long Colt ammo and .410 shot shells. They argued that because the shot shells contain multiple projectiles, the Antithesis is not a rifle. Therefore it can’t be a short-barreled rifle and isn’t subject to NFA regulation. After lengthy litigation, the ATF issued a letter this August agreeing with Franklin Armory’s contention that the Antithesis isn’t an SBR.

Two weeks and change after that letter, Franklin Armory announced the Antithesis in 5.56mm, for sale immediately.

Full story at the link.