The American firearm regulatory framework treats guns as one serialized part. Revoke a dealer’s right to sell that part, and they can legally pivot to sell every other component of the exact same weapon with no oversight.
That’s a loophole by design.
Parts sales do not require a license, a background check, a Form 4473, or any recordkeeping.
Parts for what? How about an automatic rifle or a machine gun?
Custombilt Firearms Manufacturing of Overland Park, Kansas lost its Federal Firearms License in July 2023 because ATF found that it wasn’t tracking who was buying. There were 43 documented failures to record acquisitions, dispositions, and background checks. ATF said the failures were wilful.
On February 6, 2026, it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Meanwhile, the website still lists parts for sale: complete uppers, complete lowers, multi-cal stripped lowers, CFM M16 bolt carrier groups, and trigger guards. Everything you need to build a functional AR-15 except the serialized lower receiver, which is the only part that legally counts as a “firearm” and requires an FFL to sell.
This company that ATF determined couldn’t be trusted to track firearm sales is legally selling some of the most concerning firearm components with zero oversight.
The M16 bolt carrier group is the part worth flagging. It’s legal to own and common in semi-auto builds. But it’s also a prerequisite for converting an AR-15 to full-automatic because the geometry of a standard AR-15 carrier won’t work with an auto sear. Under ATF’s constructive possession doctrine, possessing an AR-15 lower alongside M16 fire control parts and an M16 BCG constitutes possession of an unregistered machine gun under 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d), meaning a felony carrying up to 10 years, even without any assembly, just parts.
Custombilt isn’t openly selling the auto sears. It’s selling a major component of the full-automatic equation from a bankruptcy liquidation inventory, with no record of who’s buying. The part is called an M16 bolt carrier group because it’s the bolt carrier group from the M16. Custombilt is listing it as “CFM M16 bolt carrier group.” They’re literally selling a machine gun designation.
This fits into the Trump administration removal of ATF’s zero-tolerance policy. Gun dealers who failed to keep their licenses “may reapply” now. Kansas Rep. Tracey Mann even created a RIFLE Act to reinstate revoked licenses and reimburse the affected dealers.
You can find Mann at 7011 West 121st Street, Suite 100, Overland Park, KS 66209.
Custombilt is at 6201 Robinson Street, Overland Park, KS 66202.
Mann isn’t actually from Overland Park and doesn’t represent it. He’s from Western Kansas, from an area known for “noose road” in racist sundown towns for lynchings. Hays, for example, was a Jim Crow town where “Blacks were not allowed to stay overnight” and still has a “legacy that kind of hung over the town going back to the lynching.”
A legacy like this:
Trump refuses to apologize after posting racist meme…