do you need a tax stamp to own a full size catapult? can I defend

>not a firearm
The only restriction I could see is city building codes or the neighborhood comity deciding you can't have it in your yard.

Daily reminder that smoothbore cannons are legally on the same tier as muskets.

Nope. I was looking into this before because I thought it'd be cool project to build. Most people build catapults for chucking pumpkins. Most of those seem like counter balanced trebuchet though

>>33027889
that's because trebuchets can throw things a lot farther. the downside to a trebuchet though is that they are huge and much less transportable than a catapult.

No, and a trebouchet is better. I built a 5ft one once.

>>33027920
Yeah it is a lot bigger in general but compared to other seige weapons it could probably be assembled without any metal where as a lot of other catapults often need some fucky custom bent/shaped piece to support the structure where it bends. Theoretically you could probably just build a smaller scaled down trebuchet personally I think they seem a bit easier to construct than other catapult types from what I've seen of schematics/examples/imagination at least. Also some catapult depictions might be somewhat off like the one OP has pictured might not of actually used a spoon to huck things and it was just drawn in that way during their hayday to help preserve the secret of building the things.

>>33029100
>Theoretically you could probably just build a smaller scaled down trebuchet
Sure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qCaDsux6aQ

>>33029251
Well I suppose if you can't get a smaller prototype to work you probably can't get a larger more expensive one to either. Sometimes making things that small can be a lot more difficult than something slightly bigger which doesn't require a tweezers. That's pretty neat though.

>>33027851
Only if the projectiles are larger than 180mm.

>>33027851
No, and probably no again. Catapults are unregulated federally speaking. as for your other question, almost all states have laws on the books making it illegal to set a "Trap" or "spring trap" which is a super loosely defined legalese term for any kind of machine that could be considered by any judge or prosecutor to be a trap. A catapult wired to a door would definitely count, however if you merely have the catapult sighted in to a preset distance and trigger it manually you might be able to get away with it in some jurisdictions...

>>33029555
>call 911
>sir I just shot an intruder
>cops arrive
>the poor sap that tried to steal my TV is nailed to the house across the street by an 8 foot ballista arrow, together with debris of my front door

Neat. Someone living in a shitty suburb needs to rig this up, I really want to see how that turns out in court.

>>33027865
>comity