What is your authority for this statement?
Ownership for twenty plus years and employment by a manufacturer and ATF definition.
What is considered a SBR?
Short-barreled rifle (
SBR) is a legal designation in the United States,
referring to a shoulder-fired, rifled firearm, made from a rifle, with a barrel length of less than 16 in (41 cm) or overall length of less than 26 in (66 cm), or a handgun fitted with a buttstock and a barrel of less than 16 inches length.
If it does not have a short barrel attached, it's not an SBR, it's a rifle.
The tax stamp "allows you" to attach a short barrel to "the registered receiver" listed on your form 1 or form 4. You can freely add a longer barrel to that receiver if desired and it becomes a rifle at that point. There is no law or regulation prohibiting that.
If a gun is taken for analysis and has a 16 inch barrel on it and a shoulder stock, how could it possibly be identified as a short barreled rifle?
When I moved interstate
, I moved all my SBRs WITH the short barrels attached
. I could have just as easily removed the AR upper and transported that particular gun as a regular rifle as it was no longer in SBR configuration. There was no upside or necessity to do that. The AKs would have been a pain in the ass to do such a mod so I just filled out the 5320.20 with all of the SBRs listed on it and sent it in.
The SBR designation is the current or potential configuration of the gun. If the gun(receiver) is not tax paid/registered, it cannot legally be configured with a stock and a short barrel EVER. But if it is registered, it can be configured with a 16 inch or longer barrel anytime and it is no longer an SBR for the time that the longer barrel resides on that receiver......it becomes a regular rifle.
There is also no regulation preventing anyone from engraving their name and address or their whole life history for that matter on a rifle receiver......but doing so does NOT make those receivers SBRs......until a form 1 is filled out, a $200 tax is paid per receiver, and prints and pictures sent to the ATF for approval and approval received back in the form of a tax stamp with the serial number of each receiver as the cancellation of the stamp.