And those who rob the houses of collectors and enthusiasts. 
Proving once again that lawbreakers will never be stopped by another law. The ban on robbing houses isn’t expiring as well is it?
I tend to be very strongly pro-gun control, but I can’t say I’m shedding tears over the sunset of this law. I’ll eat my words when someone gets stabbed to death with a bayonet though.
This goes for that law that basically says “We don’t want cheaply made guns, poor people might buy them!” as well. Can’t remember the name exactly.
And in the meantime, you can use it as a walking, because that’s how long a 500 rnd mag will be.
I think you mean the Saturday Night Special ban or something like that. Though I think that tends to be state thing.
P.S.
Magazine. (Stripper) clips are used to recharge magazines on rifles. Moon and half-moon clips are used to retain non-rimmed cartridges in revolvers. But that thingee you put in the magazine well on your rifle or pistol? It’s a magazine.
It’s about time.
Sure they are. It’s kind of hard to steal an Uzi if there are fewer of them to steal in the first place. I am in favor of making it hard for thieves.
I’m sure the thieves were horribly upset by the lack of guns equipped with flash hiders and bayonet lugs.
If I were going to kill someone, I wouldn’t want to use an Uzi. They’re somewhat rare in comparison to other guns, making it easier for the cops to track down the murder weapon. It’d be better to use a Smith & Wesson revolver of which there are probably at least a thousand or so in any given city. Plus, Uzis are noisy. People may dismiss the sound of a single gunshot as possibly being a car’s backfire or a firecracker, but machine gun fire will draw lots of unwanted attention. It’s also, well, overkill. You only need a single bullet to kill someone-- what’s the point of firing off dozens of shots?
The only time an Uzi would be attractive would be in a gangland style drive-by and those don’t happen as frequently as one might think. Hell, the point of a drive-by isn’t always to kill someone, either, but to scare the bejeezus out of them-- meaning that a few shots fired from a semi-auto would suffice.
Just to weigh in on this rare moment of (near) consensus in gun control debating -
I too see little harm (although not “no” harm) from the sunset of this law. I simply cannot see why either side really cared much about the weapons this law addressed. Few gun users own or particularly desire to own these weapons; they aren’t used in hunting much (despite one posters claim that they are great for popping off prairie dogs); they are a bit unweildy and excessive for “self-defensive” gun use. The weapons are of interest to a very few collectors and enthusists. OTOH, very few of the annual gun deaths are attributable to these weapons, particularly as defined in the law.
On both sides the law was more of a pr gambit than anything else.
The result of its demise is likely slightly worse for all involved though. States will enact their own responses, from no additional state control, to more retrictive state control, depending on the state. From the point of view of someone who would like to see effective and efficient gun control (which to me means the greatest reduction in gun deaths for the least possible imposition upon legal gun owners and at the least cost) controls within some states but not others are meaningless in the context of pourous state borders. The only result will be more interstate trafficking. From the POV of the gun rightist, this merely exacerbates the inconvienent patchwork confusion of conflicting state regs, and may make for more restrictive regs in specific states.
FYI, no legally owned machine gun has ever been stolen or otherwise lost by the owner. They keep pretty good tabs on that sort of thing.
That should have an “IIRC” before it.
This kind of describes several so-called saturday night special laws in various states but to an excent it also applies to the 1968 gun control act. That is the law that gave the BATF power to ban imports of arms “not particularly suited to sporting purposes.” An awfully big gray area as sporting use includes everything from deer hunting to competetive shooting with submachineguns. That said the BATF assigned a point system to decide what handguns could be imported. It was based on overall size and special features such as adjustable sights and target grips. Lots of cheap potmetal revolvers were banned from import while identical guns could be legally be made in the US and sold here. Some high quality guns were banned but in many cases there were easy ways around it. The Walther PPK was banned from import but by combining the frame from a PP with the short slide of a PPK Walther invented the PPK/S which was just big enough to be legal. Glock had the same issue with some compact models. By molding a depression, a thumb rest, the gun now had “target grips” which made tjhem okay for import.
Plenty of shooters compete in NRA service rifle matches using the same types of rifle as the military. The annual Camp Perry match in Ohio is a widely attended match with a long history. The Arizona flag was designed by Nan Hayden specifically so the Arizona Territory team would have a banner at Camp Perry. common rifles uses are the M1 Garand (I have a Civilian Marksmanship Program M1), the M-14 and M-16 as well as clones of those rifles. The AWB required changes to M-14 and M-16 clones and I don’t think that removing bayonet lugs or flash hiders has made one single American safer. Now that the law has passed shooters can once again use rifles that appear the same as the military uses.
Phoenix, Arizona has three major outdoor rifle ranges in the area and many indoor ranges. The Ben Avery Shooting Facility which is operated by the state department of game and fish is the biggest public shooting facility in the US. It has a public range as well as specialized ranges for benchrest, metallic silhouette, benchrest rifle, practical and skeet. The Rio Salado Sportmsan club hosts a submachinegun match four times a year and I’m lucky to have a friend who allows me to use one of his guns to shoot this match.
There are shooters of all types. Some have innocuous looking weapons and others have guns which are very politically incorrect. We all value our right to use them. Most of us have watched our gun rights gradually be taken away from us over the course of our lives and we don’t like it. Joe Blow may not own an AR-15 but me may recognize that when an AR-15 is banned and it does nothing to the crime rate the gun banners will eventually come for his guns. The sunset of the AWB is a historic event because it may be the first time a law restricting ownership has ever gone away.
Except those owned by the FBI. Those guys have admitted to “mislocating” several of their fully-automatic firearms.
More people are stabbed to death in the U.S. than shot to death, annually.
Why bother with a bayonet, when a kitchen knife is easily at hand?
I think you are talking about “Saturday Night Specials.” Frankly, I prefer more well-made guns anyway. Not many of us were sad to see the ‘blow up in your face’ jobs disappear.
An absolute deliberate lie.
According to the National Center for Health Statistics (Centers for Disease Control) {large PDF} for the year 2001 (the most recent year that final statistics have been compiled), the total death rate by all assaults was 7.1 per 100,000. Of that number, 4.0 per 100,000 were caused by the deliberate use of firearms. That means that firearms were responsible for over 56% of all homicides, more than all other causes combined (knives, clubs, spears or damnable lies). In addition, another .3 per 100,000 were killed by the accidental discharge of firearms.
How can you kiss your children with the same mouth that spews so much vile excrement?
Oh, and before you celebrate too much over the demise of this law, just remember, the states can step in when the Feds abdicate their responsibility:
Schwarzenegger Bans Rifle in Support of Gun Control
I can’t wait to hear the militia-types whine about this!
Has a crime ever been committed in the whole US with a .50 BMG?
What was the point in banning them?