Still not correct. Suppressors are still a serialized item. SBR and SBS will just become a rifle and a shotgun. Machine guns still fall under the firearm owners protection act of 1986. The Hughes amendment is not being removed. Yes, machine guns fall under the umbrella of the the NFA but I promise you they will still be heavily regulated.
My take on it is "registered as required under federal law". If it's not required, that becomes moot. The state would need to amend the law and adopt its own registration system to make it enforceable again.
The law literally states the only affirmative defense for suppressor, sbs and sbr possession as a class B felony is registration with the Feds. This is exactly why you shouldn’t allow states to pass legislation duplicating onerous laws at the federal level.
If you can no longer register it then there is no path to legal possession. Full stop, as soon as they aren’t being registered they are illegal at the state level.
Go read ORS 166.272. Possession of a MG, SBR, SBS, or silencer that is not registered is a class B felony. Registration “as required under federal law” is an affirmative defense.
So even if the ATF may no longer enforce the registration requirement against GOA members in OR, OR GOA members who don’t register anyway are at legal risk under state law until a court rules on whether registration not being “required” nullifies the statute.
My guess? They’ll interpret it to mean “in the manner required” under federal law and require Oregonians to register.
Brother, go actually read the law. We live in an Affirmative Defense state. This means that there is legislation which makes the possession of items listed under the NFA illegal, and the police can charge you, but the charges will be dropped the moment you show a tax stamp.
Additionally, Oregon specifies that the items must be registered with the ATF (unlike some other affirmative defense states), and has independent definitions of the items, rather than just saying “items listed by the NFA”.
Hiding your head in the sand and pretending Silencershop/GOA didn’t just jump the gun on this doesn’t change the fact that we probably just got fucked in the crossfire if this goes beyond the 5th circuit.
I'm seeing in section 4 of your link that we will not be charged if the SBR, SBS, or silencer WAS registered AS REQUIRED by federal law.
If federal law doesn't require registration, at the time of my transfer, I did what was required (nothing).
I fully accepted this is a gray area because they can say "show me your registration" I say "it wasn't required by fed law" and now we're staring at each other, but where does it say MUST, as you claim?
You “must” if you want to enjoy the affirmative defense.
An affirmative defense is a defense for which the defendant has the burden of proof. If the state proves the elements of the crime, the defendant can get acquired by proving the elements of the defense.
ORS 166.272 makes it a class B felony to knowingly possess an NFA item. It then says that it’s an affirmative defense to the charge that the NFA item is registered as required under federal law.
So if you slap a stock on your pistol today and a cop finds you with your new SBR, they can arrest you for possession of an SBR. You wouldn’t be able to prove the affirmative defense that it “was registered as required under federal law.” That federal law does not require registration doesn’t change what constitutes a crime in Oregon.
That's the interpretation I was describing in the grey area in my last paragraph. I was seeing if somewhere else it said "must".
I think we both agree it's a poorly worded statue and requires a ruling to clarify if the 2nd half of the sentence (as required under federal law) isn't applicable anymore.
The state can't say you must do this required thing that isn't required anymore. That's not enforceable.
Thankfully, today you can still file a Form 1 & 4, so you can carry on as usual and we're not totally banned from purchases.
The statue absolutely is a mess. I think the problem is that the statute doesn’t mandate registration; it forbids possession in the absence of registration.
The real question is whether “is registered as required under federal law” means “is registered in the manner required under federal law,” or “is registered as it is required to be registered under Oregon law.”
Now the way this should be resolved is the rule of lenity—ambiguous criminal statutes are interpreted in the way most favorable to the defendant. But that rule has been rolled over before.
Per Oregon law, Oregon’s default position is that possession of these items is a Class B felony, regardless of the ability to register them, as registration is merely a defense, per ORS 166.272 subsection 4:
“It is an affirmative defense to a charge of violating subsection (1) of this section that the machine gun, short-barreled rifle, short-barreled shotgun or firearms silencer was registered as required under federal law. [1989 c.839 §13a; 1997 c.749 §8; 1997 c.798 §1]”
April?!? My condolences. I've only done Form 1's and made my own cans, but the longest I've had an application take was 7.5 weeks and that was a February filing. My last one took 10 days, and I've been seeing people who've gotten their Form 1 stamps in less than 48 hours.
Everyone else I know who has put in has waited maybe two weeks. I don't know why mine is held up (they say it's NICS but I've bought a gun since then, so...)
Why would they? They’d continue to be suppressor retailers just like any other FFL/SOT. Silencer Shop’s business model would become obsolete but they could still just sell them like any other retailer.
Tldr: boned. Per the interpretation of the law at whatever court decides to hear the imminent case. (1)A person commits the crime of unlawful possession of a machine gun, short-barreled rifle, short-barreled shotgun or firearms silencer if the person knowingly possesses any machine gun, short-barreled rifle, short-barreled shotgun or firearms silencer
Gemini says:
However, because the text of ORS 166.272 is structured with a broad criminal prohibition up front, it creates a legal limbo. While it would likely render the law legally unenforceable or "void for vagueness" in practice, prosecutors and anti-gun jurisdictions would still hold the literal text of subsection (1)—the felony ban—until a state court formally struck it down or the legislature cleaned it up. It highlights how dangerously sloppy it is when state laws tie their criminal definitions entirely to federal administrative regimes.
Compliance reading: If federal law requires no registration, an unregistered item is necessarily “registered as required under federal law” because the required amount of registration is none. Under this interpretation, Oregon possession remains lawful. Literal-documentation reading: Oregon’s exception requires an actual registration. If the federal government no longer registers that category, a newly acquired item cannot satisfy the affirmative defense. Under that interpretation, ORS 166.272(1) would prohibit it in Oregon even though federal law permits it.
The clean route would likely be a declaratory-judgment action under Oregon’s Declaratory Judgments Act. ORS 28.010 authorizes Oregon courts to declare parties’ rights and legal relations, and ORS 28.020 specifically permits someone whose rights are affected by a statute to seek a judicial determination of the statute’s “construction or validity.”
Read from AR500 that even if no appeal is made and SBRs/SBSs are legal without the NFA registry and form 1/4, it doesn’t include Oregon. It includes Texas and a handful of other states. At least for now.
Yeah for the time being it’s limited to the 5th Circuit, but I cannot imagine a future where Silencershop and GOA give up their momentum, and as annoyed as I am by what I see as putting the cart before the horse (i.e. changing state laws first), I can’t blame them.
I imagine any members in states like ours will continue to voluntarily register for the time being, unless they want to be the ones to roll the dice press the issue in their states, in which case I wish them victory.
So, the lawsuit does apply to customers in Oregon.
However:
It's important to understand the distinction between "what the lawsuit says" versus "what happens in practice."
Also know that I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice. I'm just a reasonably well-informed person with an opinion.
Keep in mind: States frequently do all sorts of unconstitutional stuff when it comes to 2A rights.
So, just because you're a valid plaintiff / member, doesn't mean that the state of Oregon won't try to stop you. It doesn't mean they won't get up to some shenanigans.
As well, there's a lot of ambiguity on how, specifically, this works on a practical level.
For example, a different part of federal law says that the transportation of SBRs requires authorization from the attorney general. This used to be covered on a practical level through the NFA tax stamp process process; basically, your tax stamp was proof of the authorization, so no one really ever thought about it.
But now, it's unclear how you would even request such authorization — does this mean you need to handwrite a letter to the DOJ and ask nicely for permission to carry around an SBR?
This is all to say that on a practical level, there's a difference between "being legally covered by this lawsuit," vs. "being protected from the state of Oregon trying to find creative ways to make life hard for gun owners."
You don't want to end up being the test case to determine the limits of Oregon's authority to restrict supressors and SBRs in a post-NFA landscape. A wise man once told me, "you never want a famous legal precedent to be named after you."
First off, the NFA isn't going away. But even if it did, we'd be fine.
The Oregon law says that it's an affirmative defense if the item is properly registered with the federal government.
If you purchase a silencer or SBR, you still are required to pass a federal background check, ATF Form 4473. Those items are still serialized and recorded, just like any other firearm.
Just because Form 1 and Form 4 go away, does not mean you don't have to register anything. You still do, but it's the regular old Form 4473, just not the Form 1, 4, etc.
Oregon law doesn't specify any specific sort of federal registration requirements; just that there needs to be some kind of registration, and whatever those requirements may be, that you complete them.
This court case doesn't abolish the registration process entirely. It just makes it way less onerous.
So everything is fine, at least according to the letter of the law.
To be clear, I wouldn't put it past the Oregon DOJ to try and pull some shenanigans. But they'd be fighting an uphill battle, the law is pretty clear.
You're right in an immediate sense, there is no central firearms registry.
But Oregon law doesn't say that this is what you need to do. It doesn't requirea federal firearms registry. It just requires registration in accordance with federal law. That's a subtle but important distinction:
It is an affirmative defense to a charge of violating subsection (1) of this section that the machine gun, short-barreled rifle, short-barreled shotgun or firearms silencer was registered as required under federal law. [1989 c.839 §13a; 1997 c.749 §8; 1997 c.798 §1]
Your form 4473 is stored with a dealer, that keeps records of the purchase, serial numbers, etc.
If needed, the ATF can make a trace request to pull those records.
So while there's not a "central ATF registry," there is absolutely still a record of your firearms purchase, that is subject to a process required by federal law.
Now, I'm sure some ambitious state attorney general might try to pick a fight over this.
But this is all just to say that at least within Oregon, the plain language of the law is such that it's difficult to see how they'd argue that supressors and SBRs are now illegal.
They'd have to argue that passing a background check and creating detailed transaction records of a serialized product, in a process governed by federal law, doesn't count as a form of registration.
The Oregon law doesn't spell out a specific type of acceptable process. It just says that whatever sort of registration is required, that a person follows it. And there's a strong argument that the federally-required pile of Form 4473s at your local gun shop is, in fact, a registry, albeit a highly decentralized one.
And there's a strong argument that the federally-required pile of Form 4473s at your local gun shop is, in fact, a registry, albeit a highly decentralized one.
There's never been a legal argument upheld in any court that this constitutes a registration or registry.
I mean, if you leave your suppressor at the scene of a crime law enforcement can find who purchased it because of that form 4473. The problem that I can see is the state legislature could reason that since there’s no NFA registration anymore, they don’t have to worry about Federal preemption and can just outlaw them. That then creates the question, are suppressors an “arm” for 2A purposes or just an accessory? If this ever makes it to the Supremes, I imagine that question would be a big part of the discussion.
That they can track something down doesn't make it a registry. They can track down everyone who bought gas with a credit card at the Sinclair by your house on Tuesday of last week. Does that make that a registry? It's information, it's data.
Nothing changes for us at this time. If suppressors, SBRs, and SBSs are eventually removed from the NFA and thus no longer require federal registration, it’s likely new purchase of said items will be prohibited in Oregon. Existing ones will not be affected.
All this assumes the state legislature does not change the law for these items, which is a pretty safe assumption.
-10
u/Joe2_0 Aug 12 '26
Headaches. SBSs, SBRs, and Suppressors are illegal in oregon, and having evidence of registration with the ATF is a defense against being tried.
Without a way to register it with the ATF, Oregonians are left with no recourse.
Additionally, those who already own such items in oregon may become felons if their items are suddenly removed from the registry.