Delaware prohibits any person from making, selling, transferring, purchasing, receiving or possessing a “destructive weapon,” including any machine gun or firearm that is adaptable for use as a machine gun.¹ This prohibition does not apply to: 1) members of the U.S. military or a police force in Delaware duly authorized to carry a machine gun; or 2) persons possessing machine guns for scientific or experimental research and development purposes, which firearms have been duly registered under the National Firearms Act of 1968 (26 U.S.C. § 5801  et seq.).²

Delaware defines a machine gun as any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger, including the frame or receiver of a machine gun, any part designed and intended solely and exclusively, or combination of parts designed and intended, for use in converting a weapon into a machine gun, and any combination of parts from which a machine gun can be assembled if the parts are in the possession or under the control of a person.³

Federal law requires machine guns to be registered with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives (ATF), and generally prohibits the transfer or possession of machine guns manufactured after May 19, 1986.⁴ In December 2018, ATF finalized a rule to include bump stocks within the definition of a machine gun subject to this federal law, meaning that bump stocks will be generally banned as of March 26, 2019.⁵

Delaware prohibits any person from making, selling, transferring, purchasing, receiving or possessing bump stocks, trigger cranks, or any rapid fire device⁶ which are firearm accessories that can significantly increase its rate of fire to function similarly to a machine gun. In October, 2017, a shooter used multiple bump stock devices in an attack on concert-goers in Las Vegas to perpetrate the deadliest mass shooting attack in modern history.

Delaware defines a “bump stock” as “an after-market device that increases the rate of fire achievable with a semi-automatic rifle by using energy from the recoil of the weapon to generate a reciprocating action that facilitates repeated activation of the trigger.”⁷ It defines a “trigger crank” as “an after-market device designed and intended to be added to a semi-automatic rifle as a crank operated trigger actuator capable of triggering multiple shots with a single rotation of the crank.”⁸

 See our Machine Guns policy summary for a comprehensive discussion of this issue. 

1. Del. Code Ann. tit. 11, § 1444(a).[↩]
2. Del. Code Ann. tit 11, § 1444(b).[↩]
3. Id. at (c).[↩]
4. 18 U.S.C. § 922(o); 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d).[↩]
5. Bump-Stock-Type Devices, 83 Fed. Reg. 66,514 (Dec. 26, 2018) (to be codified at 27 C.F.R. pts. 447, 478, 479).[↩]
6. A rapid fire device is defined as a part, kit, tool, accessory, or device that increases the rate of fire of a semi-automatic firearm to a rate of fire that mimics the rate of fire of a machine gun.[↩]
7. Del. Code. Ann. tit 11, § 1444(a)(6)(a).[↩]
8. Del. Code. Ann. tit 11, § 1444(a)(6)(b).[↩]