Comment by Retric
18 hours ago
“Possessing a live grenade is illegal.” https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/criminal-def...
Obviously there’s a bunch of exceptions, including as you point out the federal option of going through a background check and paying 200$/grenade. But that’s only at the federal level it doesn’t necessarily meet state requirements.
The rules on those background checks are as capricious as banning people who were dishonorably discharged from the military.
They are not "exceptions". It's exactly as I wrote: possessing a live grenade is legal, subject only to paying the $200 tax and doing the associated paperwork for the feds. The illegal part is not paying the tax.
State laws are another matter entirely, but even many states with stringent gun laws don't ban DDs specifically (probably because many lawmakers are not aware that such things are legal).
As for the background checks, I own over a dozen NFA-regulated items including a destructive device (a 40mm grenade launcher), and I can't say that the rules aren't really any more onerous than they are for regular firearms. This particular bit about "banning people who were dishonorably discharged from the military" applies equally to any firearm transfer under federal jurisdiction, for example (e.g. buying across state lines, or within states that mandate a federal check for anything). As I recall, the only thing that stood out in NFA forms compared to the regular stuff was the need to submit fingerprints. That aside, it was smooth sailing even back when I wasn't a citizen. So really the only barrier is affordability, and AFAIK this is exactly how the NFA was intended to work back when it was designed ($200 was about 4x the price of a full auto gun like Thompson back then, so it basically made them outlandishly expensive, only available to the rich).