Machine Guns & Automatic Firearms in Illinois (2024)

Illinois prohibits the knowing sale, manufacture, purchase, possession or carrying of a machine gun.¹ Illinois 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 manually reloading by a single function of the trigger, including the frame or receiver of any such weapon.” Any combination of parts designed or intended for use in converting any weapon into a machine gun, or any combination or parts from which a machine gun can be assembled, also constitutes a machine gun for purposes of these prohibitions.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 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, 2019.⁴

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

1. 720 Ill. Comp. Stat. 5/24-1(a)(7)(i).[↩]
2. Id.[↩]
3. 18 U.S.C. § 922(o); 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d).[↩]
4. Bump-Stock-Type Devices, 83 Fed. Reg. 66,514 (Dec. 26, 2018) (to be codified at 27 C.F.R. pts. 447, 478, 479).[↩]