Wow. That story needs a fact check. “A federal law allows anyone without a criminal record to buy a machine gun.” :rolleyes:
I’ll let the 70 rps fire rate of that Mac 11 slide.
Also interesting the first sentence mentions the machine gun is BLACK. :eek:
So tell me, the regulation worked so well that there was hardly a need to ban them, right? Yet… they did. Do you support that?
Is there even such a thing as an “illegally powerful engine?”
I’m not trying to eliminate any problem, I’m just saying that I could see why there might be a concern over the issue, given the fact that such weapons are already regulated. I’m not trying to speak for anyone else; my train of thought is entirely my own. Obviously it’s also legal to publish ‘informational-purposes-only’ literature on pot growing, but I think it’s a stretch to imagine that such literature could in no way facilitate illegal activity.
I hope you can see where my confusion stems from here. It’s not that I’m trying to throw every possible solution up; it’s just that there are several different lines of argument in favor of such weapons, which seem to contradict each other on several levels. Should such guns be allowed because they are identical to other weapons, or because they are not as dangerous as other weapons, or because they do not currently cause as much damage as other weapons, or just because it’s important in principle for all weapons to be available no matter how useful they are?
In this thread alone it seems like people have been arguing that such weapons are either precisely equal to, or else inferior to, conventional firearms in almost every regard. However, it seems plain that the military thinks they have significant advantages, or else they would use conventional firearms instead. In any case, I find it difficult to weigh the importance of the collector’s market against arguments for gun regulation.
I guess it’s a good thing George Washington didn’t agree with you, or he just would’ve packed up and gone home.
Terrifel, the military does not use semi-automatic weapons. The weapons the military uses have been controlled amongst the civilian populace since 1934 and the importation of foreign military weapons has been banned since 1986.
What we have here is a case of conflating weapons that LOOK like military weapons with actual military weapons. with few exceptions, all of which are owned by collectors (to my knowledge), the AK-47s that are available to civilians are all semi-automatic rifles, which means that they are no more or less than “scary looking” .30 caliber rifles. To get an automatic AK-47 you would have to go through all kinds of rigamarole and drop anywhere from $10,000 to $E15,000, with the paperwork following it everywhere it goes, making it impractical as a weapon for criminals due to the paper trail.
If you stop letting emotion control your thoughts you are forced to accept that automatic weapons are not a scourge in the country, and since your objections are based upon that premise you might want to rethink them.
I don’t know. Certainly there are things that you can do to soup up an engine that would violate some kind of regulation. Work with me on this one.
I don’t see the concern though.
In what possible situation would not being able to tell if a rifle was select-fire or not have negative implications?
You raid a suspected criminal’s house and find an AK type rifle. So, you check it out to see if it’s legal.
Someone murders someone else with an AK type rifle. Does it matter whether or not this rifle is legal at this point?
I’m not even seeing the benefit to your proposal to try to run a cost/benefit analysis, or where the concern stems from. I’m not trying to avoid your points, I just don’t understand where you’re coming from.
I’ve made a few points in this thread:
A weapon designed and used by the military does not necesarily mean that it’s more lethal and destructive than civilian weapons.
But even if people don’t acknowledge this, we’re not talking about military weapons anyway, with the fully automatic fire that they’re concerned about.
It’s hypocritical to want to ban one weapon that’s functionally identical to one you don’t want to ban on the basis that it seems more scary or powerful.
I don’t think I’ve contradicted myself in this thread. Points one and two may be where you’re seeing the confusion. Basically - military weapons aren’t as powerful as most people think, but EVEN IF THEY WERE, it’s a moot point, because we’re not talking about them.
I covered this earlier in my thread, with my first post. What the military values in a weapon isn’t necesarily what a hunter values, but it doesn’t mean that they’re more lethal or dangerous.
I give you credit for trying to approach the issue reasonably. However, it’s a mistake to assume there is such a thing as a “conventional firearm.” There is a different type of gun for every imaginable application. The military itself does not use just the M-16. The M-16 is a weapon designed to meet as many possible scenarios for the AVERAGE soldier, but the Army uses many other weapons besides. It issues bolt-action rifles to snipers that are not all that different from hunting rifles, even down to the cartridge used. As late as Vietnam it issued pump-action shotguns for jungle fighting that worked identically to what you’d see in an average duck blind. The handgun issued to soldiers (a Beretta Model 92 variant) is also used by police agencies all over the country, and by competitive pistol shooters.
The debate over “assault weapons” is a pretty recent thing, as guns that fit this description didn’t exist before World War II, and were nto common here until the 1960s. But before that, civilians could obtain the exact same weapons as the military used, and there was nothing remarkable about it.
Many “gun control” laws are aimed at things that really don’t have anything to do with how guns are actually used to commit crimes. Fully-automatic weapons are already illegal, as many other have said. Laws regulating things like flash-hiders, pistol grips, and bayonet lugs are stupid–these things have no effect on how deadly a weapon is, and even the military only uses them occasionally. Laws regulating magazine capacity might make some sense, but I submit that it only takes ONE bullet to kill. People have written in this thread that obviously the ability to “spray bullets into a crowd” makes guns more deadly. This is not necessarily true. In fact, the latest iteration of the U.S. Army’s chief weapon, the M-16A2, does not have the ability to fire fully-automatically. the Army found that soldiers (who are TRAINED to use their weapons) who sprayed bullets tend to waste a lot of ammunition without hitting anything. Fancy that!
I suspect we’re talking past each other here. Upthread I stated that I couldn’t see any reason to discriminate between military-style weapons and other weapons that are functionally identical. It later occurred to me that, if military weapons are in fact regulated, then a market in near-military weapons could in fact serve as a cover for illegal activity, and this might be a reason to treat that market differently from conventional weapons.
This was a purely hypothetical observation on my part; it could be that no gun enthusiast would ever dream of trying to evade regulations in such a manner. But if such an arrangement does aid people to break the law, then I would think it necessary to weigh costs against benefits.
I think I understand what you’re saying, I just can’t think of a time such an issue would ever come up.
If a person goes to a range and uses the full auto capability of his rifle, it would be clearly noticible.
If he commits a crime with it, it would be clearly noticible and it would be largely irrelevant because he’s gonna be busted anyway, legal rifle or not.
If it happens to be found during some sort of suspicion-based search, then it can be closely looked at to determine its legality.
I just can’t see any practical way in which the presence of semi-auto rifles based on military designs somehow hides the illicit ones. Any situation that would call for such scrutiny would lead to someone being able to tell which it was.
Though severely regulated, Japanese can own certain firearms for sport and hunting.
One of my favorite gun quotes: “Full auto is for pussies and weddings and funerals.” When it comes to killing people, experts prefer aimed, semi-auto fire. Bad guys with illegal and extremely rare full auto weapons would probably be less dangerous than those armed with semi-autos only.
If anyone is successful using a LEGAL, SEMI-AUTO rifle resembling an AK-47 or AK-74 for prairie dog hunting, I would be surprised. It is a sport of accurate rifles and with fancy scopes. Fancy target style AR-15s are another story however.
Mowing seems to indicate full auto fire, this has long been generally illegal in the US.
There is an underground business in modifying semi-automatic weapons to fire full-automatic.
No doubt. The vitals of a prairie dog are about the size of a baseball. Unless you’re Carlos Hathcock, no one is hitting that with an AK-anything.
I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but do you have a cite? Doing something like that would be extremely stupid, and, as far as I know, is a mandatory lengthy prison term if you happen to be caught.
If I’m your friendly neighborhood drug dealer, and I’m pulled over by the cops, I would rather they found a legal semi-auto AK in my trunk than a full auto conversion. The marginal benefit of going full auto doesn’t outweigh the risks, and probably isn’t even positive.
If someone is planning a shooting spree, I’d rather they converted an AK to full auto, I’d bet the body count would be substantially lower.
Business? No way. I call bullshit.
That is, unless your concept of “business” is “idiots defiantly breaking the law by creating guns that should not be used by anybody at anytime”. I’ve seen the modified weapons before. They cannot be controlled. You pull the trigger and hold on until they’re fired out.
The reason why I call bullshit is that NO manufacturer builds parts that can be used for conversion purposes, not if they want to stay in business. No person of any repute would mass-modify such weapons, because that carries extraordinarily high penalties. The idea that there are super-intelligent criminals that traffic in illegal weapons is for the movies. The BATF, whatever else their failings, stays right on top of stuff like this.
Right, and the list of massacres that Muffin used had a maximum of 8 people killed using a big-scary gun. I countered that 8 children died from a kitchen knife. Imagine the carnage? Wasn’t it bad enough as is? You think that ownership of a .22 rifle would have made those situations worse? Right now, even with the years and years of people owning rifles that can shoot 100 rounds in under a minute, we seem to be coming up with a pretty short list of massacres…I honestly bought those banana clips (I think the company was Ram Line from Denver where I lived) from a Target or Wal-mart store. They probably sold 1,000’s of those things. Give me 1 cite where they were used to kill someone! Just 1. How would regulating them and enacting more flippin laws change the fact that, gee, they haven’t been used in a massacre since I bought them in 1989?
Asinine arguments…Slippery-slope BS…“Can’t regulate anything because you’d have to regulate everything” my ass. Regulating these things is useless. There are plenty of existing laws (as Airman pointed out) that work and we should be enforcing, not just adding more and more stupid laws because one gun looks scarier than another. Trying to make things illegal/more illegal to keep them out of criminals hands seems like a losing bet…they’re criminals.
You live in a world where access to information and money can get around ANY restriction you place on just about anything. If you want to chase fantasies where you can regulate a perfectly safe world, go for it. I’m not buying it. These guns exist already and we aren’t seeing them used in a statistically significant way that separates them from other weapons.
Your comments about houses and bombs and cars speeding and whatnot fail to make a point because we already have laws to protect us from gun-wielding nuts. Age restriction, no convicted Felons allowed to own guns, concealed carry laws, etc all already exist and provide a modicum of safety. Maybe not in ‘the moment’, but, they do tend to add years to prison sentencing and can help in the long-term (no cite). The arguments that I have been proposing don’t have anything to do with the laws stated above…I’m just against over-regulation of big-scary-looking guns because I honestly feel it produces false feelings of security and doesn’t do anything more than inconvenience people. And until you can show a cite where a big-scary gun was shown to be the main reason why so many MORE people died (i.e. “if only they had a .22, then only half the people would have died”), then I don’t see your argument for increased regulation as being valid.
-Tcat
Set the WayBack machine, Sherman!
The original militias didn’t have (or need) a law banning the possession of ordnance as, quite frankly, few could afford such devices (naval cannon, field pieces, and such.) Back when, in the pre-Revolutionary colonial days, the British Army provided most of what was necessary to conduct war, relying on militias more as scouts and skirmishers than “Line” troops. Ship owners could often get permission to arm their vessels with cannons, as it was dangerous on the open seas.
Much of this holds true through the Revolution and most of the early days of the Republic, when a militia unit might be called something like “The Fairfax County Light Foot,” or the “Carter County Irregulars.”
As State-level militias became more frequent in the decade or two preceding the Civil War, Artillery units were still quite rare, as the equipping and maintaining of such units was still an expensive proposition.
This changed during the Civil War; while Infantry and some light Cavalry units predominated in the state militias, state militia artillery units, while rare, did exist. I am unaware of any particular debate surrounding the formation or equipping of such units, except to say that I think such units might have more closely resembled our modern National Guard than the “civilian soldier” classic militia member.
With the formation of the National Guard early in the 20th century, the feds ponied up the ducks for the arms and ordnance of what was then acknowledged as the “organized militia.” While the terms “arms” and “ordnance” are frequently (and mistakenly) used interchangeably in common use, legally, functionally, and tactically they are quite different.
The quick-and-dirty distinctions between the two has been that arms are carried, operated, and maintained by the individual soldier. Ordnance is typically crew served by a team or squad, and is also typically used in area-denial mode (machineguns, mortars, mines, and artillery fall into this category), or an anti-material mode (AA missiles, flak cannons, bazookas, RPGs, flamethrowers, and, to some degree, artilery/mortars again)
With advancements in technology, weapons have been made more lethal and compact, reducing their bulk, and the number of people necessary to effectively employ them in a combat environment. For instance, an RPG or Stinger team can be as few as two people: a shooter, and a reloader/spotter. For redundancy’s sake, it would probably be more like 3 or 4 people in a conventional unit, although irregulars (as seen in Somalia and Iraq) can still employ them effectively in smaller numbers; sometimes as few as one in “hit-and-fade” attacks.
This advancing technology led to problems in the Prohibition era, when fully-automatic weapons technology was developed sufficiently enough to place one in the hands of the individual in the form of weapons like the Tommy Gun, or Thompson SMG.
Given the disproportionate havoc a very small handfull of individuals were able to wreak with such weapons, some form of government oversight was inevitable, and probably necessary, to stem the criminal bloodshed. The disproportionately high tax stamp ($200 on a $20 firearm) mentioned upthread was meant to curb
ownership of these weapons, and it did to a certain degree.
All that remained was for “the feds” to track down the actual criminals who didn’t give a flying fuck about any “tax stamp,” arrest or kill them, and confiscate their weapons.
Things were pretty peacefull for near on half a century after the NFA was enacted and enforced untilthe 1980s, as mentioned earlier upthread, when Congress passed (and King George I happily signed!) legislation prohibiting manufacture/importation of any more automatic weapons, freezing the current supply in the system and driving prices astronomically high.
At this point, legal owners of fully-automatic weapons are fairly wealthy, closely watched people, who have a serious financial interest in keeping their noses clean, and all the “i’s” dotted and “t’s” crossed on their state and federal paperwork on those weapons.
Back on the subject of militias, the “organized militia,” or National Guard, is pretty much all that is used today. The “unorganized militia” has been left to whither on the vine, with Selective Service and the draft now the primary choice of filling the ranks quickly. Given modern battlefield conditions, this is probably a good thing.
Training and unit cohesion are vital fundamentals on the modern battlefield, and having a uniform issue weapon relieves a major headache for logisitcal planners.
Which means that the classic “militia” is, and has been, deader than Fred for a long time here in the USA.
But the Constitution says what the Constitution says, in spite of fancy legal wrangling meant to reinterpret it in such a way as to grant legislators and justices sweeping powers to disarm everyone, everywhere, with the stroke of a pen.
If they want to ban guns, I say let them do it honest and in the open: amend the Constitution with the amendment process built right into it.
Boy, a real skeptic, aren’t ya? “Idiots defiantly breaking the law” defines MOST criminals, my friend. As a cop once told me: If they were smart, they wouldn’t BE criminals.
I never said it was a big business; I merely meant to indicate there are people out there who will illegally modify guns for a price. I would say that beyond that, illegal weapons, like anything else illegal, can be found if you know where to look and have enough money. Your faith in the BATF is quaint, and your thinking that it requires great intelligence to traffic in arms is not correct.
Perhaps you’ve heard of the North Hollywood shootout, wherein two men held of dozens of police officers with fully automatic weapons that you claim “no manufacturer” makes parts for? How about this website, which gives detailed instructions for converting various Heckler & Koch rifles to fully automatic, using a kit made by … wait for it … Heckler & Koch?? Then there’s this press release from the Dept. of Justice, which describes how twenty “fully automatic machine guns” were found in a warehouse in Miami, leading to the arrest of six people for arms trafficking? Good thing the neighbors called police, so the BATF could show on top of this they were. :rolleyes:
Obviously, manufacturers DO make parts for such weapons, because the police and the military are legitimate markets for them. Many illegal automatic weapons found in criminal hands are either stolen from military or police armories, or use stolen parts that are themselves illegal to possess. So, to sum up, yes, arms trafficking in illegal weapons does happen. Yes, conversion kits for automatic weapons are manufactured, and no, the BATF does not know all. Guns are just manufactured objects; anyone with a machine shop and a little know-how could make one.
Funny only in the sense that you both had the same practiced response to something I never said. ExTank even managed to call me dishonest, when the only dishonesty was answering a question never asked.