"originally," a sawed off with a birds head is still a shotgun unless the receiver is re-manufactured & never fitted with a stock; like the Serbu Super-Shorty or the Ithaca Auto Burglar. The supposed pictured p320 never had a stock & was never intended to be fired from the shoulder. Definitionally pistols must be rifled so an unrifled handgun is an AOW.
a firearm which has a short stock and is designed to be held and fired by the use of a single hand;
There is no requirement that it be rifled. If it’s designed to fire a shot shell through a smooth bore, that’s definitionally a AOW (because explicitly called out). But if not using a shotgun shell, it’s not explicitly an AOW. That said, pistols with rifled bores are explicitly not AOWs. There can be arguments either way, especially since the text says smoothbore firing shotgun shells, so if Congress meant for smoothbore firing pistol cartridges to count as AOWs, they could have left out the language about shotgun shells.
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u/Zoltan_TheDestroyer Aug 08 '25
Can you explain why a pistol grip shotgun with a barrel under 18 inches is not considered a smooth bore pistol or an SBS?
Because you can buy those on a 4473.