POTD: Spitfire Manufacturing Spitfire Carbine – Semi-Auto Machine gun?
Sam.S 02.11.22
Welcome to today’s Photo of the Day! Here we have the Thompson lookalike, the Spitfire Manufacturing… well, Spitfire. The Spitfire has a neat place in history since it is a semi-automatic pistol caliber carbine with a non-NFA barrel length that is regulated under the NFA as a “machine gun.” This designation and decision came not from it being an open bolt semi automatic rifle, but because upon holding the safety down while firing it would in fact fire fully-automatically. This obviously made it so these were basically not purchasable to the average joe which was the company’s goal. They were heavily based off of the affordable Grease gun design, but made to look like a Thompson and still be semi-automatic.
“Magazine absent. NOTE: This weapon is a National Firearms Act (NFA), fully transferable Class 3, which is registered with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, (BATFE) under the provisions of 18 U.S.C. Chapter 44 and 27 CFR part 478.”
Lot 461: Spitfire Manufacturing Spitfire Carbine Class Iii/Nfa. (n.d.). Rock Island Auction Company. photograph. Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/2029/461/spitfire-manufacturing-spitfire-carbine-class-iiinfa.
