Exciting things have been happening in the world. The summary judgement out of Texas has thrown the NFA into uncertain waters. The Missouri Attorney General has also filed against the ATF over the NFA registration. The Supreme Court is finally taking up Assault Weapon Ban challenges in December.
The world is healing.
At least as it comes to our true common sense understanding of firearms. It warms my heart to see posts from MDA, Brady, Giffords, and other anti-gun hyperbole farms get clowned on in their own comment sections.
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The rise of the short kings is upon us, compact carbines and shotguns that are more fitting of the environments we live and are no longer rigidly controlled by the arbitrarily chosen values of the National Firearms Act. Rifles of sixteen inch barrels and twenty six inches of overall length, shotguns of eighteen and twenty eight respectively, these numbers are losing their hold on shaping the firearms market.
Why sixteen inches?
Originally, both rifles and shotguns were limited to 18 inch barrels in 1934. This was almost immediately amended for .22LR rifles in 1936… almost as if this whole thing was arbitrary nonsense in the first place.
Then in 1968 the United States realized it had repatriated hundreds of thousands of M1 Carbines, one of the icons of WWII. And every single one was, at the time, an SBR. Meaning thousands upon thousands of super dangerous felons had super dangerous short barreled rifles that the government had sold them through the CMP. Something like a quarter of a million rifles, give or take.
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Rather than admit their rule was nonsense, or try and enforce the nonsense rule of their own screw up on a quarter of a million people, the government chosen door number three. Change the rule. So in 1968 it became 16 inches so as not to turn people they sold guns to into felons.
No data.
No research.
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Just whoopsies, our bad. Just gonna quietly change that number here… for patriotism… or something.
Market Correction
What we are experiencing is a market correction based upon artificial restrictions. The government required sixteen or eighteen inches, so that is what was made. This meant the only groups having firearms built to their actual use case requirements were government entities. All the commercial market and small time cop shops were using the filtered off the shelf versions deemed “safe” under the NFA.
You didn’t want a 16″ AR. You never wanted a 16″ AR. You wanted a 14.5″ M4 or a 20″ M16. Those two rifles were purpose built.
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Colt began shortening the AR-15 almost immediately after the M16A1 was formalized. The model 605 had a 15″ barrel. The model 607 had a 10 inch barrel. The model 609, which became the iconic XM177 had a 10.5 barrel. All of these were developed less than a decade after Colt produced the first 601.
Clearly, size matters. Different roles demanded carbines and the NFA only allowed for a little variance. The Colt Model 6920 is a testament to this silliness. Is it a fine rifle, yes. It set the standard for a long time in what a good AR-15 was supposed to be. But It’s almost too big for a police cruiser rack.
You know what isn’t? A shorter barreled variant. And that’s before we think about adding suppressors for officer safety.
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Environment > Arbitrary
The AR-15 is far from the only firearm that had to be goofily reengineered for the arbitrary safety lengths decreed by the National Firearms Act, but it is America’s rifle and stands as the most prominent example.
As I said above, the US market and the veterans of GWOT would not have bought 16 inch rifles had the law not required it, they would have bought M4s. Their trusted 14.5″ carbines. Now, as optics and ammo have caught up, 14.5″ is the service rifle standard.
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These shorter firearms fit our lives and use cases better. They have every bit of range they need still but can actually get through a doorway. The 16″ guns, or originally 18″ guns, would have developed in their niche the way the 20″ M16 did, the M16 being long enough it never offended the NFA in it’s normal form.
In the modern age of firearms, since WWII began that era essentially, we have not had a period where the market was not shackled by the NFA. Product requests and designs where function lead were limited to the government, and the government only buys so many and in niche.
As the Sunset AWB Market showed post-2004, the market will innovate significantly faster for the various arms of a consumer base that is over 100 million strong and doesn’t have to constrain itself with procedural things like requests for quote and annual budgets with the city council.
I expect that should the NFA get nationally revoked for the SBR, SBS, and Silencer category and SCOTUS rule in favor of the 2nd Amendment once again, we’ll see some very very cool new shorties arrive.
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