So you mean, this fellow produces a lower (I guess it is called, I could be wrong) with no trigger ass’y, no barrel, no slide, no spring, and a normal beat cop doing weekend buyback duty, sitting at a folding banquet table in a parking lot identifies this as a gun and hands over the reward?
The BATFE identifies (in fact defines) a pistol frame as a “Firearm”, legally. That’s the part that gets the serial number.
In many of these “buybacks” no questions are asked, and the guns don’t have to be fully functional. That means there are bigger numbers for the dept to claim :success”, which is what the people who donate the funds for this stuff want, anyway.
I have seen junk pawn shop pieces over the years, sold “as is”, for far less than $200, and they weren’t worth that, imho. But those would still qualify for the payment.
As I said, the BATFE defines it as a firearm.
Form 4473 must be filled out and NICS done for the sale of a finished handgun frame or lower receiver.
Maybe they stick a few parts on it, but another feature of gun ‘buybacks’, is that the firearms do not have to be functional.
It may be that the cops would decline to purchase them, but (and especially in this case) doing so plays into the narrative about “ghost guns” as well a making the totals “bought back” appear larger, which is a win/win for gun grabber types.
I question whether beat cops find these virtue signalling events to be of any real value, anyway, and someone may well ‘know a guy’ who can print them so the fund can be tapped.