does this include dealer samples. for instance the FN PS90 (civilian version P90) early version with a black hammer pack is said to be easily converted to full auto with minor modification, as the hammer pack is essentially the same as the P90. The later hammer packs were changed to correct that. So much so that some dealers seek out this version to modify and register as a post-sample I think it’s called and then when they are done with it turn it back to a normal one. This way they have a firearm they can then sell or keep after returning to normal.
The number of legally possessed automatic weapons by civilians is small. The most recent statistics I could find were from 1995, when the number registered was “over 240,000”. In the ensuing 15 years that number can only have diminished since manufacture has been banned since May 1986. That’s not counting dealer/manufacturer samples or homemade automatic weapons of quasi-legal status, which don’t add anything substantial to that number.
Still, less than a quarter-million total weapons is inconsequential compared to the number of new guns (all semi-automatic or otherwise legal) sold per year.
I think it doubtful anyone seriously believes a total gun ban would have no effect. What is probably argued is more that criminals will still be able to get guns.
While I feel the full auto situation has been well answered, this part of your question has not really been addressed. In truth, you’re not going to be getting a very useful answer out of this question.
When the NFA was passed there was some use of fully automatic weapons by criminals, the Thompson submachine gun obviously being infamous. However even back then, civilian ownership of automatic weapons was exceptionally rare. Mainly because of two reasons: cost and utility. When the Thompson first came out it cost about half a year’s wages, whereas a rifle, shotgun, or pistol (which will satisfy essentially 100% of the utilitarian needs for a firearm U.S. citizens would have in the early 1900s) cost far less than that to purchase and operate.
Further, for some 100 years prior to automatic weapons being widely available, people had been buying traditional rifles, pistols, and shotguns. Then as now, guns get passed down through the generations. A well made firearm can last several lifetimes of actual use if it is properly cared for, where I’m getting at is that in 1934 when the NFA was passed automatic weapons were rare. Most people weren’t gangsters and even most gangsters weren’t really using automatic weapons (it was a bogeyman, or an exaggerated concern.) So the prevalence or lack thereof of automatic weapons after the NFA isn’t going to give you a good idea as to what future gun control laws would effect.
The situation in 1934 was that a huge portion of the public owned firearms, and very few owned automatic weapons.
The situation in say, 2011 is that there is something like 500 million legally owned firearms in this country, for those who don’t pay attention to the decennial census that is more guns than people in this country. No piece of paper can make that much hardware disappear, and it presents an enormous bureaucratic and legal problem if there was to be an NFA style law passed regulating all firearms.
If you look at gun control laws across the world, countries that have never had a strong tradition of private gun ownership tend to be able to restrict gun ownership pretty well. Primarily because all they need to do is have a moderately robust customs agency that catches a good portion of said weapons. That means that any smuggled guns will be very, very expensive, and thus not widely owned by criminals.
The United Kingdom is a good example, aside from shotguns you won’t find a lot of guns there, and generally only organized crime is going to get busted with lots of firearms.
Russia is another example, of a different sort, the black market there is so rampant that criminals have much easier access to guns than they do in the United Kingdom. Especially due to the fact that the old Soviet Union had a lot of guns and a lot of those guns have passed into private ownership due to high levels of corruption and graft in the Russian military.
Mexico is a poor example, criminals get guns very easily there and Mexico has very restrictive gun laws. However, Mexico shares one of the world’s longest borders with the United States and we have such permissive gun laws that it creates a huge incentive for shady operators here to sell guns to Mexican drug fighters because it’s very easy money and the border is so large the chances of getting caught are fairly low.
Edit to add: I actually can’t think of any country in history with gun laws as permissive as the United States changing to a gun control regime such as seen in the U.K., for example. So I don’t know that we have any real world analogues to suggest what we could expect to happen here.
The UK itself is an example, since the English BIll of Rights was among the first documents to provide for the freedom to own arms and to abolish standing armies. Although never enshrined as an inalienable right due to Britain’s system of parlimentary sovereignty, many British legal commentators over the years commented on owning arms being a characteristic of a free people.
Perhaps, but my understanding is there was never any widespread gun ownership due to any practical use for a gun, even back to the 17th century, was restricted to the elites. The situation was vastly different in the unsettled North American continent.
So while I suppose it true that the United Kingdom at one point had very permissive gun laws, since they had very low gun ownership it would not serve as a good analog for the United States.
This is true. The tommy gun got all the attention, but sawed off shotguns were far more common gangster arms. The 1934 law also addressed them.
Australia’s the closest analogy I’m aware of, although handgun ownership has been heavily restricted here since WWI and automatic weapons have been illegal since about the same time. From what I’ve heard, prior to 1997, obtaining a firearms licence in most states wasn’t especially difficult or time-consuming, but still not at the US levels of permissiveness either.
If automatic weapons were sold without increased tax and increased scrutiny/licensing compared to handguns etc, they’d have no trouble being sold.
This might sound a bit obvious, but the main reason theres not much demand from a smuggling/illegal manufacture perspective in the US is theres a much easier alternative - high capacity semi-automatic weapons, either in pistol, rifle or carbine form as needed. You only have to look at the most recent mass shooting to see how quickly people can be shot with a semi-auto pistol.
So the only people who commonly have a strong need for them to the point of spending significantly more so they can get them are collectors.
Otara
This is incorrect. People have sort of hit on points around this issue, but I don’t think anyone’s broken down exactly how the full auto laws have changed over the years.
1934 (National Firearms Act) - Required a $200 tax stamp from the ATF for the transfer of any full-auto firearm. (Keep in mind that $200 was a lot of money in 1934, and that figure hasn’t changed.)
1968 (Gun Control Act of 1968) - Prevented the import of new machine guns; domestic machine guns could still be manufactured and added to the MG registry set up by the NFA.
1986 (Hughes Amendment of the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act) - Closed the MG registry to new entries. This is the reason for the fixed supply of full-auto weapons that others have mentioned. However, the existing guns are no more restricted than they were in 1934, although the price has obviously gone up.
As for civilian ownership and use, like most hobbies, it’s pricey but not out of reach for someone with a decent income and a strong desire. Regardless, even though the guns are out there, I don’t think it’s worth worrying about from a legislation perspective. Even before the registry was closed to new guns in '86, crime with legally owned machine guns was virtually non-existent.
In fact, it was nonexistent. There have only been two documented murders with legally possessed machine guns since 1934, and both happened after the registry was closed. One of them was a police officer carrying out a contract killing in 1988, and the other was a doctor in 1992, circumstances unknown. That’s it.
Also, from the first cite above:
Simply put, machine guns are not, and never have been, notable instruments of crime. They were controlled (1934) and limited (1968 and 1986) because of moral panic, which they still elicit. It’s the gun version of reefer madness.
A friend of mine at the sheriffs department told me two or three years ago about an AK-47 manufacturing ring that was operating in my county at that time. So there are also illegally made automatics floating around in addition to legal or smuggled imports.
For a comparison, A Thompson M1928A1 cost about $200 in 1934 when the NFA was enacted; the tax stamp was basically a 100% tax on the price of a Tommy Gun.
In modern money, a Thompson SMG (pretty much the only full-auto weapon with any sort of ready civilian availability at the time, with the exception of the BAR) cost about $3,250. Double that with the NFA Tax and it’s $6,500. Most people in Depression-Era America did not have the modern equivalent of $6,500 lying around to spend on a sub-machine gun, especially one with little practical application for agricultural work or hunting.
Interestingly, Thompson SMGs were advertised as “Thompson Anti-Bandit Guns” (with lurid ads showing homesteaders Out West fighting off “Bandits” with their Tommy Gun and keeping their families and livelihoods safe in the process) and Thompson ads also advised that they would only sell their guns to “Those on the side of Law & Order”. Theoretically, Gun dealers selling Thompson SMGs were supposed to ensure they only sold them to upstanding citizens who had no desire to use them for or in aid of illicit purposes (like bootlegging or bank hold-ups), but… well, obviously there were some dealers who didn’t ask too many questions about why the man in the suit with a briefcase full of money wanted a couple of Thompsons to “Protect his Ranch” which was conveniently near Chicago’s docks and not in Arizona.
Also bear in mind that until 1968, you could actually order a Thompson SMG (or any other gun, for that matter) by mail- basically send them a cheque, a purchase order, proof you’d paid the NFA tax (in the case of full-autos) and a delivery address, they’d send you the gun. That’s how Oswald acquired his Carcano rifle, incidentally.
There is no reason to single out Oswald as an example. It didn’t really matter where he got his because he was a planner. I like looking at the ads in the backs of old magazines though. It is interesting how gun views have changed over the years even in the U.S. There were lots of ads for small bore rifles like the .22 in magazines for boys, fairly young boys, in popular magazines like Boy’s Life. Then again, they were placed beside the ads for mail order alligators and chinchillas and chemistry sets that would place whole towns on lock-down today. I kid but not really. You could order lots of weird stuff in the mail back then. You still can, it just isn’t marketed the same way.
There is a reason to single Oswald out as an example- he’s the best known example of someone buying a gun “through the mail” and going on to do Something Very Bad with it. He got a revolver he was carrying the same way- via mail order, using a false name. It’s my understanding that one of the reasons the GCA was implemented was because someone (Oswald) brought a firearm- legally (not counting the “False Name” thing)- through the mail and then used it shoot the freaking President and people went “Hang on, you can actually buy guns by mail order from anywhere in the country and no-one checks who you are or anything? That… doesn’t seem like a very sensible state of affairs.”