22 August 2023

What's The Fine For An Illegal MG Again

 Morphy's has a transferable M249 up for auction.

Opening bid is $300,000.

Expected price is $600,000 to $1,000,000.

I can't help but think there's perverse incentives happening because of this.

The $250k max fine is still under the minimum bid... then there's the (up to) 10 year sentence.

First felony is free, they say.

When I speculate about this, I often wonder just how many unregistered machine guns are out there.

Not terribly long ago a search warrant for a completely unrelated to guns search found dozens of MG's at some guy's house.  And the evidence he was guilty of the crime they got the warrant for, but still.

He lived in the middle of nowhere and until the warrant, nobody appeared to be the wiser he was making MG's and shooting them on his property.

I want to say he was making M1919's, but I could be remembering wrong.

I've never been the target market for a machine gun.

I can barely afford to feed the semi-autos.

A giggle switch would lead to living in the dark.

Under a bridge.

In a refrigerator box.

With no guns at all.

Divorced.

And that's doing it by obeying the law!

If I was doing it illegally I'd have to hope the cops were faster than Harvey and got me into the police car before she cut my throat.

9 comments:

  1. Those are my thoughts as well on shooting fully automatic firearms. If the point in shooting is hitting your target, fully automatic fire would appear to be the opposite. Not only keeping sights on target with the unbalanced firearm, but the constant noise - recoil is against accuracy. And the price of ammunition being what it is today ... Yoinks but that is some expensive fun. Thanks but no thanks.

    jrg

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  2. As far as I'm concerned, even were it legal full-auto would be for those who have Uncle Sucker paying for the ammo. That said, I am informed that back when Shotgun News was publishing (I haven't seen a copy in years; wonder what happened to it?) you could buy all the internal parts for a MAC-10 through it, perfectly legally---and then buy templates that would allow anybody with machine shop access to build the outer receiver. Not that I would ever do such a thing. Not me. Uh-uh.

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    Replies
    1. The name changed to "Firearm News" a number of years ago. I think they have an online presence. I am not sure if they still have a print edition or not. I subscribed for years when I had a C&R FFL.
      -swj

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  3. I worked at a store with lots of sub gun shooters. They typically ordered 30K of remanufactured rounds at a time, some several times a year.

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  4. If he was going to violate federal law by building them, why didn't he violate federal law gain and make fake paperwork for them also?
    From what I've heard, it is hard for even other ATF employees to get information out of NFA Branch, let alone other agencies, so it is almost impossible to check whether a Form 4 is real or not.
    Additionally, the ATF doesn't like to admit it, but they lost the records for a large chunk of the registry, so they don't know what is out there or who has it - I've heard people talk about trying to fake paperwork and slip a gun into the registry.... they ended up not doing it, but not because they couldn't have.
    The price of parts or post samples shows how law has distorted the market - for example, an M240 costs about $5,000 in parts, sometimes less, and the uncommon semi versions are about $10,000.
    JH

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  5. a crew serve type auto, easy to fire...hand held auto without training is very hard to shoot...just a waste of ammo...i've shot a fully auto glock and without a shoulder brace, you might get 1 or 2 on target but the rest are going anywhere and everywhere...huge waste of ammo...mp5 on full auto with training is like having sex...30 rnds in 3 secs...in a fist size hole...the memories...panzer guy

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  6. The ATF made a letter for that weapon saying it's legal to own.
    What's the sucker that owns it going to do when they decide it's illegal?
    You know- like they did with that stupid (to me) AR pistol brace.

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  7. In the early '60s, there was a sort of proto-"militia" group, the Minutemen, who were organizing in case of a Communist takeover or invasion. The government came down on them HARD because of their idiotic insistence on playing with full-auto firearms. If they'd been willing to train with semi-auto versions of the full-autos, like those semi-automatic Thompsons one can buy, the government would have had a lot less to work with.

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  8. The way to avoid Harvey's wrath, it seems to me, would be to give her a fair share of trigger time with your toy.

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