Oregon prohibits any person from knowingly possessing any machine gun, unless it is registered under federal law.1
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, 1986.2
In 2025, Oregon enacted SB 243 to address the growing threat of “rapid-fire activators”—devices designed to circumvent machine gun prohibitions by increasing a semi-automatic firearm’s rate of fire to levels comparable to fully automatic weapons. SB 243 provides a comprehensive definition of “rapid-fire activator,” covering any device or part that increases the rate at which a trigger is activated beyond what is possible for the firearm alone, or increases the rate of fire beyond what is possible for a human to achieve manually.
Although the law specifically includes explicit prohibitions against the following devices, the language is flexible enough to be responsive to new devices created by the gun industry:
- Bump Stocks: Devices using recoil energy to facilitate repeated trigger activation.
- Binary Trigger Systems: Triggers that fire a round both when pulled and when released.
- Burst Trigger Systems: Devices allowing two or more rounds to discharge with a single trigger pull.
- Forced Reset Triggers: Devices that mechanically force the trigger to reset after each round.
- Switches and Auto Sears: Devices that prevent the trigger bar from limiting the weapon to a single round per pull (commonly referred to as “Glock switches”).
- Trigger Cranks: Manual or power-driven devices that activate the trigger through a circular motion.
The law creates two new criminal offenses related to the manufacture, transfer, and possession of these devices:
- Unlawful Transport, Manufacture, or Transfer: It is a Class B felony to knowingly transport into the state, manufacture, sell, or transfer a rapid-fire activator.
- Unlawful Possession: It is a Class A misdemeanor to knowingly possess, purchase, or receive a rapid-fire activator.
See our Machine Guns policy summary for a comprehensive discussion of this issue.