Many Michigan gun ranges may soon get quieter as Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette today issued an opinion that Michigan residents may own firearm silencers as long as all Federal laws are followed.
A firearm silencer, also called a suppressor, reduces the sound of a firearm's discharge noticeably. This reduces the danger to the shooter's hearing caused by the report and also reduces the ambient gun shot noise in the area.
Silencer ownership is regulated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms (ATF) on the Federal level and may also be regulated at the state level. Under Federal law anyone who wishes to obtain a silencer must get approval from the ATF and pay a $200 tax on each silencer they obtain. This is in addition to the cost of the silencer itself. The ATF will not approve the application to own a silencer if silencer ownership is prohibited at the state level.
Michigan law only allows silencer ownership if the owner is "A person licensed by the secretary of the treasury of the United States or the secretary's delegate." The exact meaning of that phrase is the subject of Attorney General Opinion #7260 issued today. Up until now that phrase was read to mean that silencers could only be owned in Michigan by law enforcement agencies or those federally licensed firearms dealers who sell silencers to law enforcement agencies.
Today's AG opinion changes the reading of that law so that any Michigan resident who can legally own a silencer under Federal law is now allowed to own a silencer in Michigan
This Michigan AG opinion comes almost six years after the Dec. 27, 2005 opinion by then-Attorney General Mike Cox that allowed Michigan residents to own those machine guns that were manufactured and legally registered with the ATF before May 19, 1986.
Before Cox issued AG opinion 7183, Michigan residents could only own those machine guns that were "Curio & Relic* eligible under Federal law, and then only if they had a "Curio & Relics" Federal Firearms License. That is because Michigan state law only allowed private ownership of machine guns if the owner was, " A person licensed by the secretary of the treasury of the United States or the secretary's delegate." Cox held that the Federal ATF transfer paperwork for machine gun ownership was, in effect, a "license from the treasury of the United States," and that Michigan residents could therefore own any machine gun manufactured and registered with ATF before May 19, 1986, as long as the ATF approved the transfer. This eliminated the requirement for Michigan residents to have a Federal C&R license and allowed Michigan residents to own any legally registered machine gun, not just those that were C&R eligible.
At the time it was widely thought that Cox's opinion would also apply to firearm silencers since the language in the law regarding silencers was nearly identical to that regarding machine guns. However, the ATF took the view that since the AG opinion only mentioned machine guns, and not silencers, that meant the opinion only applied to machine guns, and not silencers. The ATF said another opinion that specifically mentioned silencers would have to be issued before the ATF would approve the transfer of a silencer to a Michigan resident.
Although AG Cox studied the issue; he left office without issuing another opinion on the matter. Today's opinion by AG Schuette that the federal transfer paperwork for silencer ownership counts as a "license issued by the secretary of the treasury," should clarify matters for the ATF and that agency should soon start approving transfer paperwork for silencer ownership by Michigan residents.
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