Michigan prohibits the manufacture, sale, offer for sale, or possession of a machine gun or any other firearm that “shoots or is designed to shoot automatically more than 1 shot without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.”¹ Note, however, that this prohibition does not apply to a person licensed by the federal government to manufacture, sell, or possess a machine gun.²

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, 1986.³

The state also generally prohibits any person from knowingly: 1) manufacturing, selling, distributing, or possessing, or attempting to manufacture, sell, distribute, or possess, a device designed or intended to be used to convert a semiautomatic firearm into a fully automatic firearm; or 2) demonstrating to another person, or attempting to demonstrate to another person, how to manufacture or install a device to convert a semiautomatic firearm into a fully automatic firearm.⁴ A “fully automatic firearm” is a firearm employing gas pressure or force of recoil to mechanically eject an empty cartridge from the firearm after a shot, and to load the next cartridge from the magazine, without renewed pressure on the trigger for each successive shot.⁵

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

1. Mich. Comp. Laws Serv. § 750.224(1)(a).[↩]
2. Mich. Comp. Laws Serv. § 740.224(3).[↩]
3. 18 U.S.C. § 922(o); 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d).[↩]
4. Mich. Comp. Laws Serv. § 750.224e(1)(a), (b).[↩]
5. Mich. Comp. Laws Serv. § 750.224e(4)(a).[↩]