How to find out how a lower is a pistol or rifle?

[Scott.Thornton]

If you buy a stripped lower, how do you go about finding out if it is a pistol, or rifle receiver? It is marked multi, and his receipt says pistol. I just don't want to run into a legal issue down the road. Lower has several owners with no clue how it was originally labeled.

 

[Ritten]

If you buy a stripped lower, how do you go about finding out if it is a pistol, or rifle receiver? It is marked multi, and his receipt says pistol. I just don't want to run into a legal issue down the road. Lower has several owners with no clue how it was originally labeled.

It would probably just be easier to have it transferred through a dealer and list it on the 4473 as whatever you plan to use it for. The only record of what it was originally sold as would be at the dealer it was sold from.

 

[Col_Sanders]

I thought that now since they are marked as "Other" on the 4473, you could build them as either?

 

[Scott.Thornton]

I thought that now since they are marked as "Other" on the 4473, you could build them as either?

3.

I have never seen the 4473. I just don't want any trouble later

 

[bs875]

I thought that now since they are marked as "Other" on the 4473, you could build them as either?

You can. A lower receiver should be transferred as "Other: Frame or Receiver" on the 4473. Regardless of how it was originally configured, if at all, you can make it into a rifle or a pistol as long as you don't have a "constructive possession" issue with having a built rifle lower and a short barrel upper for example. Even if you don't believe that post-Thompson Center you could always make a pistol into a rifle, just not the other way around.

 

[JNieman]

Stripped receivers must be transfered as "Other" on a 4473 as of a few years ago.

http://www.ar15.com/media/viewFile.html?i=27183
http://www.ar15.com/media/viewFile.html?i=27184

You can build it into either firearm. You can build it into a rifle, but it must remain a rifle if that's it's first incarnation, until NFA territory applies. If you build it into a pistol, you can supposedly go back and forth, however, while avoiding NFA territory in your configurations, meaning, if you put a buttstock on it, make sure the barrel is >16". This is based on the definition of "weapon made from a rifle" and is a weird ruling based on T/C kits, which are rather analogous to AR 'kits'.

Personally, I see no way to ever even /be/ under suspicion of having a pistol-made-from-a-rifle, if you started with a bare receiver, because whatever state it's in at the time is the only state there is evidence of it being in, and there would have to be evidence it was not made as a pistol first, and it's rather hard to prove a negative.