You find a crate of Thompson submachine guns in the woods in England...then what?

For things that aren’t specifically offences under military discipline (stuff that doesn’t apply to most civilians), the principle is that the Military Courts are bound in sentencing by the civilian equivalent.

Wrong. Possession of unlawful firearms is an absolute offence here, and the mens rea is unimportant.

This is correct.

Contrary to popular belief, full-auto weapons (machine guns, silencers, etc) are NOT illegal for common civilians to own under federal law in the USA. (There are a few states, though, that restrict them, as ducati has pointed out.)

As was stated, all it takes is money, paperwork, and time. Generally, one submits a license application to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, along with a set of FBI-certified fingerprints and background check, and a recommendation letter from one’s local law enforcement official (usually a sheriff). Payment of $200 is also submitted to the BATF, and after waiting for the bureaucratic machine to do its thing, the applicant, if approved, can take possession of pretty much any weapon, as long as the supplier is a holder of a Federal Firearms License (FFL).

So yeah, in the US, as long as you meet the United States Code’s guidelines for gun ownership in general, live in one of those 46 states, have no criminal record, have $200 spare dollars and can finagle a recommendation from your local sheriff, you can own any damn machine gun you want. Or grenade launcher. Or silencer. Or pretty much anything else.

And the Bologna Massacre.

In a civil court, yes. In the part you quoted, I’m talking about a hypothetical prosecution under military law (which I think I said don’t think a discharged officer would be subject to).

The point I intended to make is that there’s an obvious difficulty in the army prosecuting a soldier for being in possession of an issued firearm. He’s either a civilian who has no excuse for having it, or else he’s a soldier who does. He can’t very well be both. And even if he could be, the civil penalty (in this case) is actually more severe than the military one.

In short, Watson would be in enough shit just for having the gun – any army involvement isn’t going to make it any worse.

Before moving onto Armalites and then just blowing up kids with semtex, the IRA actually did use Thompson sub machine guns for a while. For that reason, if I found the batch I’d likely leg it pretty quickly :slight_smile:

With the provision that the automatic weapon in question had a date of manufacture prior to May 1986 and had already been registered with BATFE. An unregistered weapon (such as these would be) are still criminal unless you’re permitted to have post-May 1986 dealer samples or the like, which is why some people have legitimate weapons like a Glock 18.

For the record, authentic, transferrable Tommy guns go for $30,000 or so.