It is my understanding that the State of California has had a moratorium on machine gun owner before the NFA of ‘34. The search I came up with was https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/1927-cal-stat-938 which said that machine guns became illegal in California in 1927. So it would seem odd that someone could have bought a M10 in San Francisco in 1981. I don’t know for a fact but those two pieces of information don’t seem to match up.
Looks like an open bolt m10 which would make the stock and forward grip illegal since Cali doesn’t allow SBRs. Guessing the owner was a cop which I think there’s a carve-out for that? Otherwise…
I think @Hey... misunderstood my post on where the gun came from. It was bought in 1981 in San Francisco before the place was destroyed and moved out of state.
Registration? For a title 1 firearm?!
When the firearm was created, it would have had a record of the serial number. This would have been forwarded onto the ATF at a bare minimum when RPB went out of business. I wasn't meaning that I was registering it myself as a title 1 firearm (not NFA registered), this would already have been done when it was manufactured by RPB.
All of the old collectable RPB stuff is over priced for what it is. If you want to get sticker shock, go look at what pouches and other cheap stuff that was poorly made back in the day sells for.
I personally have never seen one with the stock installed for sale on GB, at least not for longer than a few hours or a day before the seller takes it down after they find out it’s not supposed to have it installed. The only unregistered SBRs I ever see actually selling on GB are the Cobray CM-11/9 marked receivers (carbine receiver) with pistol uppers installed on them, which are often listed as handguns, unbeknownst to the seller that the receiver marked “CM-11” was originally papered as a rifle. It’s an easy mistake to make because the receiver is identical with the exception of an extra letter “C” stamped on the lower either as a prefix on the model name or under the SN, and the amount of info out there about these guns is sparse.. at some point in the rifle’s life it was converted to a handgun by swapping out the upper and then sold to a pawn shop or unsuspecting gun store as a handgun. The FFL is unaware that the “C” on the receiver denotes “carbine” and continues the cycle by selling it to another unsuspecting customer as a handgun, so on and so forth, until it ultimately ends up on GB, listed as a pistol, when its actually an unregistered SBR.
I think it actually has to be an SBR to be considered an SBR, just the thought of what it could be if more work is done isn’t enough to constitute a crime in this instance (I.e “constructive possesion”). This is the logic the ATF used to make them stop producing open bolt semi autos. The “thought police”. By this logic it is illegal to own basically everything, because if you do more to it, modify or alter it in some devious way, it could become illegal. I’m yet to hear of anyone being charged with “constructive possesion of an SBR” for owning a buttstock along with a pistol as long as it’s not installed. And they are indeed sold this way all the time on platforms like gunbroker (and the ATF does absolutely have a heavy presence on GB).
