Note the specified time frame. They were definitely Uzis back then.
I’ll take your word for it. They were a popular weapon in that time frame.
In a way, sort of.
This could be proposed as evidence that gun control works. There are certainly arguments against that, but I’m not going to get into that now.
But look at the result:
Between 1934 and 1986, no civilian-owned fully automatic weapons were used in any crime. Despite tens of thousands of guns and hundreds of thousands of owners, they had an absolutely perfect record.
And yet, in 1986, the importation and manufacture of such weapons for civilian ownership was banned. Previous weapons were grandfathered - but it is now effectively illegal.
So - you have gun control enacted, and then an ABSOLUTELY PERFECT RECORD - and yet gun control advocates still were not satisfied, and banned them anyway. This is very typical of gun control - they’re generally not concerned with actual results, their hatred runs so deep that they won’t be satisfied until they can chip away gun rights completely.
So - yes - you want to call this a success for gun control, and yet it still resulted in a gun ban. It’s a good example of how gun control actually works.
You yourself have supported this.
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Did you see the :)?
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Do you think I actually shed tears for the poor oppressed people who can’t buy machine guns?
In everyday life you see them mostly at airports and other highly protected buildings or now and then at police checkpoints. However police submachine guns aren’t actually that rare. As a general rule there is one in every patrol car.
Well the whole thing’s a rather a silly argument, but since we’re here…
The article said it’s often easier, not always easier, so the fact that you can’t get one in California doesn’t disprove that statement.
You have to pay a fee for a driver’s license, and a tax for your vehicle.
If you get a driver’s license, then you possess a license, so that evens out.
Which requires no effort on your part other than waiting for that to be completed. Getting a driver’s license, on the other hand, can require driver’s ed, behind-the-wheel training, waiting in a long line at the DMV, completing a lot of application paperwork, studying for and passing a written exam, and passing a road test.
To say it’s harder to get because it’s expensive seems a little disingenuous - probably not what the article meant. At any rate, I’ve never priced machine guns, but this site seems to indicate that some can be had for less than the price of an automobile, which one could argue is necessary in order to drive.
Perhaps, but you can’t really say the statement is incorrect. It is essentially true, although it involves a judgment call as to what one considers “easy” or “difficult”.
And how many tests do you have to pass to get a machine gun?
Actually, you’d have to compare the percentage of deaths/injuries with respect to the total number of cars, and likewise with machine guns, since there are no doubt far more cars than there are machine guns.
The statement is still wrong if we are talking about a machine gun…or any other fully automatic weapon. Any ordinary citizen can get a drivers license…very few can get a machine gun. Even if we are talking about just a gun, the statement is misleading…as its only often easier to get a gun than a drivers license depending on where in the country we are talking about…and your definition of ‘easier’.
Yes I can…here goes. The statement is incorrect. Its very rarely easier to get a machine gun in the US than it is to get a common drivers license. Only if we are talking about a non-automatic weapon could you possible parse the sentence to be vaguely true…and this would still be circumstantial depending on WHERE in the country we were talking about.
Only if your definition of ‘easy’ and ‘difficult’ are different than everyone else’s. 
I don’t know as I don’t qualify to get one. Do you? If so, how many ‘tests’ did you need to go through to get your’s? I’m guessing…you don’t have one either. The only person I know personally who HAS a machine gun (well, a sub-machine gun…fully automatic weapon though) is a gun dealer I know.
Feel free. I don’t think it would be a meaningful comparison as there are more cars in the country than PEOPLE (500 million IIRC…something like that). Machine guns are pretty rare (no idea how many…there are only about 200 million guns privately owned in the country, again IIRC…and the vast majority of those are not machine guns).
-XT
Most of those aren’t machine guns. None of the AR-15s there are automatic action. I don’t know who’s buying those M-16s, but I suspect police departments. Technically, they’re not machine guns, either. I didn’t bother to check the unfamiliar models, after seeing those glaring errors.
I don’t know whose site that is, but it seems to be of the same quality as your usual arguments.
Yes. Have you seen my kitten?
Further notes on the matter: The M-16 is not capable of fully automatic fire, being limited to a three round burst.
Second: The right to own a M-16, is, by virtue of Miller, enshrined in the Constitution, as it is the standard infantry arm, and thus the proper thing to own if you serve in the militia. Without digressing into the organized, unorganized, disorganized, well regulated, unregulated, and themocoupled militia, can we accept that as fact? The right to own the proper gun of the infantry of the armed forces, currently, as an explicit note of law, enshrined in the Constitution.
(Admittedly, they’re switching to the M-4, but that’s a M-16 with shortened stock and barrel. It should be possible to actually swap parts out and turn one into the other without changing any essential mechanisms of the gun. Never tried it, though.) This also explains their low price, it’s a function of there being a load and a half of them being made since the 70s in heavy mass production.
They still aren’t machine guns. Or submachine guns. I didn’t see the MP-5 there. I miss it?
Nitpick: An assault rifle is always selective-fire (capable of automatic fire as well as semiautomatic fire – although the automatic function may be disabled, as in many M14s). An ‘assault weapon’ is a scary-looking semiautomatic. The former is a specific definition, while the latter is something they came up with when ‘assault weapons’ were banned because people pointed out that what the laws were banning were not ‘assault rifles’.
I did, but it’s something that’s true about gun control, and something you have yourself advocated in the past. I don’t think you were totally kidding about bringing it up as a point in support of gun control, and I thought it was worth mentioning the rather telling counter to that.
Of course not, you have a high level of contempt for them, despite it being clear that the people most enthusiastic about gun ownership as a hobby and/or excercise of personal freedom tend to be the least likely people to actually be inclined to commit any crime.
No! Got pictures?
Have you seen my frog? His name is hoppen green frog.
Johnny: Correction appreciated. Sorry, I don’t pay that much attention to the matter. Wouldn’t mind owning one, but not in my budget or aspirations. More of a single shot rifle guy. Or, now, shotgun.
I suspect the reason they didn’t outlaw assault rifles is that they couldn’t, re: Miller.
Edit to reply to Martin below me: (Ha!)
I thought of that, decided to toss it since I was simplifying. Any modern M-16 is incapable, vintage ones are, didn’t want to get into it.
Slight nitpick, the M-16 comes in many varieties. The two most produced are the M16A1 and the M16A2. The A1 was mass-produced and used extensively in the Vietnam War by the United States Army and the United States Marine Corps. It featured both semiautomatic and fully automatic fire.
The M16A2 is the version used since the mid-1980s up until the present day, and there are millions of them out there. This one was basically several improvements on the M16A1, better sights, better accessory compatibility (this version works with the M203 Grenade Launcher.) It also featured the removal of the full automatic fire and replaced it with the 3-round burst. After a lot top brass looked into it, it was decided that full automatic fire was not desirable in main line infantryman rifle. Inexperienced soldiers (and even experienced ones) tend to waste ammunition with fully automatic weapons, and have the tendency to “spray.” The 3-round burst combines an acceptable rate of fire with greater accuracy and ammo conservation, and it fits in line with what the Army wants from its infantrymen who are carrying the weapon–accurate, controlled fire. It’s the province of forces like the Taliban to hug an Ak47/74 and spray and pray.
Hehehe…
On a more serious note, have you guys tried or have you access to any foreign rifles? Besides the AK of course, stuff like South African R1’s, R4’s and R5’s, and Israeli Galil’s?
The importation laws are complicated and often completely arbitrary. Often rifles are imported, and then parts are swapped out because if a weapon has so many US-made parts it’s considered a US-made weapon as far as bans goes. So someone has to set up a program to buy rifles, and then exchange the parts, and then sell them - so they only bother to do that for rifles they expect to have a market for.
That said, plenty of other foreign weapons are popular. FALs and G3s are very popular and I want some myself some day. I’ve seen Galils, although they’re not at all common. I’m not familiar with South African weapons.
Whenever we can, man. Me, I want to get my hands on a P90 one day. Got to be interesting to fire that. Of course, I also want to own an Alexander Arms Beowulf, then go shoot car engines to see what pops off. (Junked cars, of course.)
This would be a better debate if you wouldn’t bring your own emotional baggage into it.
“Mr. Pott, phone call, line 2. Its Mr. Kettle. He’s calling you black again…”
-XT