Ever heard of a Marble Game Getter? I think I’m supposed to have heard of it because there’s 11,300 hits on Yahoo search. Can’t easily find a picture of the 12" barrel version, but it’s a cheap-looking over-under, usually .22 over .410 or smoothbore .44, with a single-action revolver grip and an interesting folding metal stock. They bring $2-3,000 these days. Here’s some for sale, 18" version:
http://www.gunsinternational.com/results.cfm?cid=772
Here’s Eric M. Larson’s testimony before the House Subcommittee on Treasury, Postal Service and General Government, 08 April 1997
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/wbardwel/public/nfalist/rip/larson_4_97_congress.txt
as to why the MGG is not an evil item even if the barrels are 12" long. Too bad they didn’t do as he recommended.
Just today this opinion came down from the First Circuit:
http://www.ca1.uscourts.gov/pdf.opinions/08-1044P-01A.pdf
In short, police got called to this guy’s house for shots fired, which turned out to be two warning shots (ohhh, brother) at somebody who was making trouble with his son, and one of the warning :rolleyes: shots ricocheted and hit the subject. Police arrested him and took into custody 204 
guns from his home and investigated the whole incident.
The good news: Those warning :rolleyes::(:mad: shots were in righteous self-defense; charges dismissed on that part of the incident.
The bad news: When he went to get his guns back, there were only 202 
laid out for him. He said where’s the other two, especially the Marble Game Getter? Well, seems that one of the detectives was a gun guy and recognized that the Game Getter was a little short, barrel-wise, as was a Winchester .22 rifle, and turned them both over to ATF. The Winny, ATF concluded, was not a registerable item. But the Game Getter was a 26 U.S.C. § 5845(e) “any other weapon”:
The term “any other weapon” means any weapon or device capable of being concealed on the person from which a shot can be discharged through the energy of an explosive, a pistol or revolver having a barrel with a smooth bore designed or redesigned to fire a fixed shotgun shell, weapons with combination shotgun and rifle barrels 12 inches or more, less than 18 inches in length, from which only a single discharge can be made from either barrel without manual reloading, and shall include any such weapon which may be readily restored to fire. Such term shall not include a pistol or a revolver having a rifled bore, or rifled bores, or weapons designed, made, or intended to be fired from the shoulder and not capable of firing fixed ammunition.
Five months in prison and a $50,000 fine for the gun collector when ATF found it wasn’t registered and the U.S. Attorney had nothing better to do than prosecute him under 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d) forbidding possession of items that are supposed to be registered, but aren’t.
On appeal he said, among other things, hey First Circuit, last year you let that lady in Puerto Rico walk even after she got caught with a select-fire AK! Yeah, but that lady wasn’t a sophisticated gun collector and wasn’t likely to know that when you flip an AK selector and find it has a detent or notch or little hole in between the safe and semi settings, that’s the full auto mode. You, sir, could just LOOK at a rifle or shotgun and see that the barrels are four to six inches too short. Conviction affirmed. Bring that 50k check when you surrender to the Marshals, and we’ll see you in five months.
I suppose he broke the law, but if a 90-year-old hunting gun that got victimized by NFA is all he did wrong, this is not a good use of LE resources. But we can expect to see more of the same. So everybody, if you have unregistered NFA items and think you won’t get caught, do you want to take this kind of chance?
Oh also, there was another case affirmed on appeal last month, where a disgruntled wife or girlfriend mentioned to the police that her bad man had a submachine gun hidden in the garage wall. They looked, and he did. Scratch one poor old innocent Thompson.
