That is really not true, although I guess it comes down to what you consider “easy”. If someone is a machinist and has access to good metal working equipment, they could make their own guns. Converting one to full auto would be fairly easy for them. For your regular joe, there are not parts out there at a gun shop that you can just drop in and have an instant machine gun. There used to be items called “drop in auto sears” that allowed someone to convert an AR-15 to full auto. These have been registered and essentially illegal since at least 1986. The penalties are pretty stiff so this doesn’t happen very often.
It has been illegal for a non licensed dealer to convert a gun to full auto since 1986.
Partly true. In addition to the ‘drop in auto sear’ you would need the following M16 parts:
[ul][li]Hammer[/li][li]Trigger[/li][li]Selector[/li][li]Disconnector[/li][li]Bolt carrier[/ul][/li]
A drop-in auto sear would do nothing without these parts. While drop-in auto sears used to be available, they are, as you note, no longer. Plans are available to construct one, but it does require a certain level of metal-working skill including making the spring. Of course it is illegal to do this.
Military auto sears also used to be available. They are too wide to fit into a civilian lower receiver. To make them fit, the interior of the civilian lower receiver would have to be machined to get rid of the excess metal and a precisely-position hole would have to be drilled for the pin. Once this is done the lower receiver becomes a machine gun, even if no parts are installed in it. Again: Illegal.
When I come across full-auto parts for sale, they are always accompanied by the note: ‘All NFA rules apply’; and occasionally ‘Not for sale in Washington [and other specified states]’.
If you can get the parts, and if you are capable of construction a drop-in auto sear from blueprints, then it’s pretty easy to convert an AR-15. I wouldn’t do it though.
They do so for law enforcement, the military, etc. Those guns are not allowed to be sold to the general public. Don’t worry about them.
Illegally converted? Yes I agree, however, there should be a legal way as there was prior to 1986 to convert firearms to full auto. There were exactly no problems with those guns prior to 1986, yet they were outlawed anyway.
Ask the police- they insist on carrying semiautomatic 17-round Glocks. Why do they need more than ten?
I’ve never experienced a worst-case scenario but one took place close to home in 2011. A tornado ripped through north Minneapolis (my home wasn’t in harms way fortunately). In the damaged section power was out, the police and emergency crews had all they could handle, the city had to declare a curfew. Looters were a problem, including a liquor store that was cleaned out after the doors and windows were blown out. So how much gun do I “need”? Worst case, enough gun to convince a mob that looting my house wouldn’t be a good idea. One of these would be nice (and yes, that’s a semi-auto.)
Generally I don’t believe any justification is needed to exercise a right, and the burden is on those who wish to restrict that right to justify themselves. That being said, I would ask you as a point of reference how often must the occasion occur for you to change your opinion on the matter? That being more than 10 rounds being beneficial or confrontation with more than 1 bad guy?
During confrontation when armed self defense is called for, people miss. Hit rates I believe are near 25% (from memory, could be off). Combine that with the fact that people are usually not instantly incapacitated by being shot and generally require multiple rounds to incapacitate, 10 rounds may not even be sufficient for a single bad guy.
And as **Lumpy **says, police regularly carry 17 round magazines. I’m sure some carry more and some less, but 17 is I would think the majority. I cannot conjur any reason that would apply to the rationale of police that would not also apply to the person prepared to defend themselves. Can you?
Yes, about magazine size: the problem is, if someone is attacking you and he is not stopped by the realization that you have a gun in the first place, he’s probably nuts (or, perhaps he’s a bear). If you are using a small caliber, one or two bullets might not be enough to incapacitate him. The accuracy rate of even trained police is pretty low. So, if you have two nutjobs coming at you, and you need to put two bullets in each, and you are likely to miss 3 / 4 shots, you need 16 rounds. That’s a conservative estimate in all regards.
Speaking of unintended consequences - magazine size restrictions will also cause people to gravitate to bigger, more powerful handguns, e.g. .45 caliber instead of 9mm. If you can only carry 10 bullets, they might as well be big ones.
For law enforcement and military? Couldn’t the LEO’s simply get unmodified guns that meet their needs? Or is this a cost-savings ploy? And why don’t they have these kind of things in-house?
Are you talking about private ownership or LEO’s? I would question why any private citizen needs a fully automatic weapon
Putting yourself in danger to confront criminals differs from defense of self or home. You seem to be purposefully obtuse by bringing up this point. You might as well ask why the military needs better weapons. The reason is that they face things, purposefully, that differ in scale than what you as a private citizen would. Besides, I want LEO’s to be able to outgun criminals.
Seems like a very unique and rare circumstance. Why do you think that justifies less restrictions when most people would never face that? Using the same logic people use against the AWB, its a tiny percentage and would not significantly affect violence, so you having one gun with 10 rounds would not affect the crime rate outside of such rare circumstances. Keep in mind though, should you try to use this argument the other way, I’ve already explained that the opposite is not true. If AWB’s are truly used in a tiny fraction of crimes, and thanks to people like you I know that they are functionally no different from many other non-banned types, then it makes perfect sense to ban AWBs because your rights are not infringed for the purposes of defense.
Also, how many people did you have to shoot to save your house from looters? Was it more than 10?
Really? You don’t think that the government should get to ask you why you need to incite a riot? You don’t think they should be able to monitor your communication to a known terrorist, or bring perfectly legal but sensitive technology to North Korea?
Majority, so more than 50%. I would argue that most people isn’t as invested in doing the crime as avoiding getting shot, so one may not even need to fire at all. Let me ask you something then, how often are you confronted by more than 1 or 2 assailants? What percentage would you be willing to accept so as to agree that lowering the clip capacity to 10 is a good idea?
Yes, people do survive multiple bullet wounds. But how often is that person a criminal intent on committing the crime after being shot under 10 times? Just like how pro-gun like to play the fallacy devil’s advocate and ask why 10, why not 13, or 7, then I would like you to answer if 10 rounds issue sufficient, then what is? Surely its not 100? So what limit would you be favor of?
Yes I can. Law enforcement officers place themselves in danger. They confront crime, instead of avoiding it or running away from it. That’s their job. So it follows that they, in the course of their jobs, are faced with a much higher rate of criminals than non-LEOs. In order to protect themselves against this higher rate of violent incidents, they must be more ready for the worst than an ordinary citizen. Just as the police have ready access to high powered weapons, trained dogs, bomb defusers, body armor, criminal backgrounds, etc. because they may use them more often than a regular citizen, an ordinary citizen does not need ready access to those things because their circumstances are different. I think that ordinary citizens should not have access to anything except the most basic self-defense arsenals because the vast majority of the time, especially compared to LEOs, we would not use them for such and it would be dangerous or misused in our hands.
Plus, LEOs are accountable, not just personally, but organizationally. If lax rules at a precinct fosters a dangerous vigilante squad, then everyone responsible can be disciplined. But if an ordinary citizen misuses his arsenal, little can be done except to punish them personally. It doesn’t matter if the NRA is spouting lies and fomenting paranoia, you can’t jail the entire board of the NRA if one of their members believes their crap and goes on a shooting spree. But if a captain tells his rookies to shoot black people because they are more dangerous, we don’t just discipline the rookie, the captain goes too, along with questions about how the station can allow such a thing to go on. And of course, all LEOs are checked mentally and physically, trained, and certified to carry these weapons. You want a non-partisan, common sense reform? Support a law that says anyone who buys a gun at any time needs to be retrained, licensed, registered, and have to come in every few years for re-certification. What I see now is a pompous nod to the 2nd Amendment and a refusal to confront the violence in any meaningful way
You once said that assault weapons constitute an insignificant minority of gun violence. I ask you now, how often does the above happen, where a criminal is not deterred after more than 10 rounds fired by someone defending themselves
You’ve lost me completely here. What are you talking about?
Fortunately I haven’t been confronted by any assailants. Both me and my spouse work from home occasionally, and by dumb luck my house was robbed during the day when we were both at the store. No percentage would ever make it acceptable to me to restrict magazine capacity.
I would be in favor of no limit, as it is in most states currently. If there could be a billion round magazine, or belt fed weapons, that’s fine with me. I imagine they would be pretty expensive. Actually, I’ve been to gun ranges where people are using belt fed guns. It looked fun.
It is my job to provide for the defense of myself and my family. I do not abdicate this responsibility to the police, they do not assume that responsibility on my behalf. The fact you acknowledge they have a need for such defense (regular size magazines) recognizes their efficacy. Your position to limit access to these items inherently makes the judgement that their defense is somehow more important or more valuable than my own. I completely disagree with that assessment. Again, any item that is effective for self defense will also be effective for offense. You have to acknowledge that by restricting items such as magazines, you are restricting one’s ability to defend themselves in the most effective manner possible.
Here’s the thing - akin to where I stated earlier that gun rights advocates look at you like you have three heads when you talk about magazine limits, etc. The same thing happens when you start telling others what they need.
Here is where you are wrong. LEOs, DAs, an many members of the criminal justice system have absolute immunity in their actions while carrying out their duties. If an ordinary citizen actually ever defends themselves, they subject themselves to massive civil and criminal risk. It is not something to be undertaken lightly.
I’m leaning away from that actually. I’m moving more towards the “no compromise ever” position simply because I have no faith in those who wish to restrict rights that they would ever be satisfied. New York is now proposing a magazine limit of 7 rounds. This would make illegal nearly all semi automatic pistols in existence. It would make illegal the pistol that Dick Heller wanted to use when he won his case at the Supreme Court.
Btw, I’m in CA where there is currently a 10 round limit on magazines. Of course, pre-ban magazines are common and possession of such magazines is not a crime, and most folks stockpiled crazy amounts of pre-ban magazines, the ban doesn’t really do anything. Magazines when properly maintained will last forever. That and if they break, it’s perfectly legal to repair them, the bans are useless.
Guns wear out, technologies improve. Gotta feed the beast. Whether they need them or not I could not say. I don’t claim to speak for LEO.
Private ownership. Full auto guns do not account for even a pixel worth of data in the gun crime statistics. They are extremely expensive and almost exclusively owned by collectors, LEO, and the military. Once again, it comes down to need. You don’t see a need, but the people paying 10’s of thousands of dollars to privately own one of these guns do. Yeah they cost that much.
So of course magazine limitations would mean that criminals would only have low-capacity magazines. :rolleyes::rolleyes:
For exactly the same reason people are afraid of gun massacres: they’re very unique and rare circumstances that most people would never face, but nationally they happen several times a year. A disaster that causes a temporary breakdown of law and order? Between storms, floods, mass power outages, wildfires, riots and even the occasional earthquake, same deal- in a nation of 300 million people, it happens somewhere almost every year.
Two. One looter who took two rounds to center of mass while the others fled; and a mewling pacifist who insisted I’d committed unwarranted murder, who took the remaining 28 rounds before he finally shut up.
Why is the question always phrased in this manner? Why do you “need” internet access or indoor plumbing? Surely an outhouse is sufficient for your needs as well as carrying buckets from the nearby creek.
I don’t think that in a free country, the discussion should start with what is an absolute necessity. It should start with a person trying to restrict a freedom to articulate why it is necessary to curtail that freedom (any freedom).
Maybe I like to take a legally registered Thompson sub machine gun and fire it at soda bottles on my 100 acre property on the weekends to relieve stress. How am I harming anyone? I contend that it is up to you to find a reason to outlaw my hobby.
How about *my *right not to get killed if you go nuts or get drunk or just get pissed off? Is that a consideration for you? How does your claimed right to enjoy destroying soda bottles expensively trump that?
Stop supporting things like the “assault weapons” ban. Stop supporting a law, and, when it’s explained to you that the distinctions the law makes have nothing to do with the actual functioning of the gun–how fast it shoots or how big the bullets are or anything like that, but instead is solely concerned with stuff like what type of grips the gun has–say that the law is still a good one because:
“Guns are bad and we should ban them all, and if we can’t do that, at least we can ban some of them! Hey…why are you people who are opposed to banning guns so suspicious of our sensible and moderate gun regulations?”
(I am starting to see some media reports indicating that the focus may be shifting from “assault weapons bans” to things like universal background checks, so there may be hope yet.)
When I drive my car to work, there’s a risk I will go nuts and run you over, run you off the road, etc. Hell, there’s a risk I will do that accidentally, without going nuts. Should your “right not to get killed” prevent me from driving my car?
We have a concept in this country. It is a necessary component of a free society. It is called “the presumption of innocence”. The idea is, we don’t take away people’s rights until after they have committed a crime.
I guess I am really talking about due process, in combination with the presumption of innocence. But the point remains. Your irrational fear that I am going to go nuts and shoot you is not a justification to take away my rights.
Interesting response, unfortunately I think that anyone debating you on this subject us unlikely to sway your opinion no matter how good, valid and factual their points may be. On both sides of this issue, passions run so high that logical debate has little chance of converting one side to the other. It’s much like debating abortion, religion, etc. One a person has chosen a side, it’s unlikely that anything said will make a difference.
Knowing that I will point out a flaw in your argument, this is a point I made either earlier in this thread or in one of the other threads on the subject. In the text above from your response you make the argument that law enforcement should be entitled to carry higher capacity weapons than the citizens they protect because the nature of their job demands it. I would say that this point is not only wrong, but almost completely wrong. It is true that police on occasion confront armed suspects and engage in gun battles. However, I would argue that the person on the pointy end of a knife or the business end of a firearm is almost always Mr.or Mrs. Average Citizen and not the police. The truth is, the police are not here to protect us, they are here to fill out the paperwork and attempt to apprehend the criminal AFTER the crime has been committed. This isn’t because the police don’t want to protect us, it’s because there is very few of them compared to the millions of citizens. It isn’t possible for them to be there DURING the commission of most crimes. The scary fact is that most of the time Mr. Average Citizen is alone when confronted by a criminal intent on robbing, murdering, assaulting, raping, etc… With that being the case I think it is criminal for our law makers to take away any advantage a citizen might have over a criminal. If anything a citizen should have equal to or superior weapons than the police to defend themselves, their families and property for if they have to wait for the police to show up, they can count in being another statistic. If you can somehow prove me wrong on this point I would really like to see the proof. If you can show me that the majority of violent crimes were either prevented by police or stopped in progress by the police before someone was hurt I would love to see it.
Keep in mind, I am not trying to say the police are useless. What I an saying is that the reality in the real world means that chances are very high that if you are going to be a victim of a violent crime you will have only yourself and possibly another civilian to protect you DURING the commission if that crime. And if that is the case I would hope that you would want the very best defensive weapon available to you. By their very nature, A great defensive weapon can also be used as an offensive weapon. And if you are able to obtain that weapon I also hope that there us never a time when you will have to use it against another human. I own several firearms, I have my entire life. Never once have I ever needed one for self defense and that is just fine with me. However, should the day ever come that someone has chosen to enter my home with the intent to cause harm to myself or my family I will not hesitate even a second to use my weapon. I have never, ever gone looking for trouble, but I am prepared to meet it head on if it comes looking for me.
Now, with that said, I am certainly not unreasonable and I can agree that we have a problem in this country with violence. However, passing laws that are feel good, politically correct measures is asinine. The current proposal does nothing but take away rights from law abiding gun owners while doing exactly zero to reduce the threat if violence we as a nation face. The problem isn’t guns, the problem is mentally disturbed individuals that are hell bent on causing mayhem. Yes, they choose a gun to do their damage, but I submit that someone as mentally deficient as the Sandy Hook shooter would have found a way to inflict the damage he did, gun or no gun. A couple of cans of gasoline could have gotten similar results. That person had made his mind up to kill and all the laws we can pass wouldn’t have stopped him. That is where the focus of all if This should be, finding some way to identify those in our society that are capable and willing to commit these acts and act before they can carry them out. I don’t have the answer, but I guarantee that you can pass all the magazine and assault weapons bans you want to and we will still see tragedies like Sandy Hook happen. They possibly won’t be committed with AR-15, but committed they will be.
