Updated: 09/13/2004

This page is Obsolete!!!

As soon as the date changed to 9/13/2004 the Federal "Assault Weapons" ban expired (as required by the built in "sunset" clause).

Effective immediately the Federal encumberances upon guns with evil features, and magazines that held too many rounds are no more. You will no doubt find the market flooded with dealers selling off their formerly "Law Enforcement Restriced" (a.k.a. LE Only) rifles and magazines. The markings on these items are now irrelevent and items so marked will hopefully become collectors items - a token memento of a misguided law that lived for 10 years and quietly died - hopefully never to be repeated.

I've heard some express concern about carrying guns or magazines marked "Restricted Law Enforcement / Government Use Only", for fear that a local law enforcement officer might not be aware of the sunsetting of the law and might be bothered by the presence of the markings. If you share that fear, you should download this ATF notice and print it out and keep it in your glove box. If you have a sense of humor, you might simply engrave the word "NOT" before the restricted marking.

I'm going to leave this page here for awhile as a morbid curiousity. Maybe I'll nuke it some day. Congratulations to all gun owners for writing and calling their elected officials and pushing to let this miserable law die. Also, a special thanks to the folks that run the AW Ban Sunset page. It is a great resource and it looks like they are going to keep it around for awhile.

That's it! Below appears the remainder of the page as it developed throughout the 10 year history of "the ban".

PLEASE NOTE: This page is comprised of information submitted by individuals for the purpose of sharing information. It is not an official statement by any government agency, manufacturer, or any other entity. All data presented here is correct to the best of the page maintainers knowledge, however, no warranty or guarantee of any kind is made concerning the accuracy of the information contained here. When known the phone number of the manufacturer of the firearm is provided so that you may verify the accuracy of the information for yourself and it is recommended that you do so. It is important to understand that the possession of a post-ban firearm in an "assault weapon" configuration is a felony unless it is possessed under one of the Federal exceptions.

Also note that simply because a given lower receiver has a "pre-ban" serial number does not necessarily mean that the firearm was assembled prior to the ban, only that the receiver was manufactured before the effective date of the ban. In order for an assault weapon to be "grandfathered", it must have been configured as an assault weapon prior to the ban. The effective date of the ban was September 14, 1994, passed the day before on the 13th. If a stripped lower receiver was in a dealer's bound book at the time the ban took effect, and it is later discovered in an assault weapon configuration, it could be rather easily ascertained that it is not a grandfathered firearm. Receivers in private hands on the day of the ban are a little more ambiguous as who is to say if it was or was not in an assault weapon configuration on the date of the ban, and then later stripped? As always, buyer beware.

New submissions and corrections to existing material should be sent to the webmaster.

The page is organized by manufacturer. Below you will find links to each manufacturer's section. Currently the registry is presented as one big page to make it easier to print (in case you want to take it to a gun show, etc.)

If you came to this page directly, click here for the MP5.NET home page and to re-establish the frames.

Index

Armalite/Eagle
Benelli (imported by H&K)
Bushmaster
Colt
Essential Arms
J.L.M. and Sons
Olympic Arms
Pac-West Arms (PWA)
Ruger

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Armalite/Eagle
(800) 336-0184

Since this is such a useful service (and saves the manufacturer countless hours spent answering serial number related phone calls) I volunteer to host a serial number lookup program (which I'll write) and the serial number database for any manufacturer who wants to provide it. Interested manufacturers should e-mail me.

To use Armalite's online lookup service for Armalite / Eagle Arms, go here: http://www.armalite.com/ASPs/serialNumberSearch/submitSerialNumber.htm.

So you have something to print to take to a gun show, ArmaLite's official "generic" position on pre/post status of receivers they've made is:

1. Almost all Eagle Arms rifles bearing the notation "Eagle Arms Div ArmaLite" are post-ban rifles. The only exception will be on serial numbers under 30,000. Receivers with pre-ban serial numbers marked with the ArmaLite name are new receivers produced to repair legitimate pre-ban rifles.
2. Many Eagle Arms lower receivers were sold to customers and assembled outside the factory. ArmaLite has no way of knowing which of these arms were legitimately assembled into "pre-ban" rifles before the Crime Bill went into effect.
3. ArmaLite's history specialist will conduct research into the production history of a given serial number and provide a letter attesting to its factory designation and shipping date. The research will be conducted at a cost of $25.00 per firearm. The customer name CANNOT be provided due to privacy constraints.

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Benelli (imported by H&K)
(703) 450-1900

I called H&K and they couldn't/wouldn't specify the "cutoff" serial number for pre/post ban Benelli's. Given this, the best we can do is post assorted serial numbers and import dates that will help you guess. If anyone comes up with a cutoff number, please let me know, and also please let me know any serial numbers and dates that you run by H&K.
 

*Note: Discrepancy between M19833x (9/19/94 post-ban) and three larger serial numbers M200050, M200100, and M200111 (9/05/94 pre-ban). There is no accounting for this discrepancy. All information was provided by H&K and/or Benelli. Presumably the shipments of imports did not come in perfectly ordered by serial number. Many manufacturers and/or importers are in this same situation and that is why they can't provide a "cutoff" number.

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Bushmaster
(800) 998-SWAT

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Colt
(800) 962-COLT

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Essential Arms
(tooling bought by DPMS 1-800-578-3767)

Per DPMS, Essential Arms went out of business prior to the ban and hence, all Essential Arms lower receivers should be pre-ban.

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J.L.M. and Sons
(603) 425-1860

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Olympic Arms
(360) 459-7940

This information was given to me by a net citizen who saw it in the Brownell's catalog: "Post-ban production is year-prefixed, but they too had receivers in the "float". Non-prefixed serial numbers are not a guarantee of actual Pre-ban status."

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Pac-West Arms (PWA)
No known phone number

This information was given to me by a net citizen who saw it in the Brownell's catalog: "Definite serial cutoff. Last Pre-ban lower is #35,222. All Post-ban receivers are given a year prefix."

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Ruger (Sturm, Ruger & Co., Inc.)
602-788-6555

NEW!  A helpful net citizen passed on the following link for Ruger's website which now has serial number information again. This is a vast improvement over what we've been working with so far:

http://www.ruger.com/Firearms/SE-CalSerialHistory.html

I will keep the old information below on the page for awhile for historical reference, but may remove it eventually unless I get a bunch of e-mails saying not to.

The information below is purported to have come from the Ruger website before they removed their serial number range information (see the note above as they've put this data back up).

Important note: I have received information from specific individuals with serial numbers that have been researched by Ruger and despite the fact that they should be "pre-ban" according to the chart above, Ruger indicated they were in fact post-ban.

Another note: I observed a message board post regarding the 10/22 which said:

That 235 number [for the 10/22] was a "safe" number so no one would fall in a postban catagory with a preban configured gun. Call Ruger if you have any questions about the year of MFG of your 10/22. I have a 236 (obviously above the posted number of 235) which was manufactured in 1992.

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