Louisiana law prohibits the sale, transport, purchase and possession of a machine gun, with few exceptions. 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, 1986.¹

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, 2019.²

In 2023, Louisiana updated its definition of machine guns by defining 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. The term shall also include the frame or receiver of any such weapon, and 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. The term shall not include items that are not required to be registered in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record maintained by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.”³

By amending its definition of machine gun in this way, the state banned possession of trigger activators. Since the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives defines trigger activators as machine guns and thus requires them to be registered, they can no longer be possessed in Louisiana.

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

1. 18 U.S.C. § 922(o); 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d).[↩]
2. Bump-Stock-Type Devices, 83 Fed. Reg. 66,514 (Dec. 26, 2018) (to be codified at 27 C.F.R. pts. 447, 478, 479).[↩]
3. La. Rev. Stat. § 1751, 1781(5).[↩]