Machine guns are also treated differently. In 1986, as part of the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act (FOPA), Congress prohibited individuals from owning machine guns, and made it an affirmative defense that the machine gun was registered before the act took effect (which was 5/19/86). See 18 USC sec. 922(o) for the law. Thus as an individual you can only legally own a machine gun that was registered before that date. Any registered after that date can only be owned by SOT’s, law enforcement, and government entities. A SOT may not keep these machine guns after surrendering his SOT. In order to transfer one of these machine guns, the SOT must have a request from an agency able to own one for a demonstration. Or an order from one of those agencies to buy one. A class 2 SOT can make machine guns for research and development purposes, or for sale to dealers as samples, or for sale to government entities. These are commonly called post-86 machine guns.
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The statute of limitations on violations of the NFA is three years, with the possibility of extension of that time to six years for some wilful violations. See 26 USC sec. 6531. The statute of limitations does not begin to run on possession offenses until the possession stops. As long as you possess the contraband item, you are in danger of being prosecuted.
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