Hmm. I still haven’t seen the last three or four episodes, and since I don’t remember this particular gag, I’d better avoid this thread if I don’t want any spoilers. One of these days I’ll finish watching.
Was it truly the best idea to tell you, gun crazed Americans, that this works?
OH man - how can you just sit there and not finish it? Or are you like me - put it off because you don’t want it to be over. Yes this has to do with the finale so to watch it first.
I want to watch the whole episode of Mythbusters as they allude to having issues making it work right.
Don’t worry. An M-60 like that would cost tens of thousands of dollars and about 8 month wait for a full ATF background check to own. So its a rich person’s toy.
I dunno. My wife and I were enjoying it together for a few years, but in the last season I got distracted by Game of Thrones. Since my TV-watching time is limited, when I worked late we’d fall behind, and eventually I told her not to wait for me, and I’d catch up later. Since that was midway through the gripping final season, I didn’t want her to miss out on the watercooler conversation. And since then I just haven’t gotten around to it.
But I will. It is an excellent show; I just haven’t been in the mood this year.
But… but it is available for civilians to buy and own? That seems horrifically imprudent. They may not suffer the same pressures, but rich gun owners do crack too, from time to time. Someone could choose to go out in an exceptionally excessive blaze of vainglory with that, and take the whole Farmer’s Market along with them.
One of these days I’ll start watching.
Not to mention 600 rounds per minute at $0.64 per round. And a replacement barrel.
I’m guessing the number of murders committed by an M-60 in the US (unless somehow disguised as a “training accident” in the military) must be zero.
Needs a cover over the mechanics, a thin aluminium sheetmetal will do. Otherwise it is liable to trap a spent casing in the mechanism and jam. Alternatively, a guide for the spent casings could be attached to the gun, to direct them to a collector (a leather bag, for example) where they will be out of the harm’s way.
Cool toy, I’d say!
IIRC you need to be a federally licensed fire arms dealer in order to own an automatic weapon of any sort. And while those aren’t particularly difficult to obtain, they aren’t really something anyone can run out and sign up for and they require regular filing of paperwork. Sort of a weird loophole that allows for the licensing and registration of things that are otherwise a no go. I also seem to remember hearing that since these sorts of things aren’t something that was generally available any thing like this you might buy is either re-manufactured from non-firing or damaged surplus parts or converted over from something that was never intended to fire full auto. Which means you aren’t going to find a working one with out a lot of expense or extensive experience as a gun smith. And you can’t really expect them to fire in anything like a reliable way without a gun smith on hand to trouble shoot. Its this sort of really weird edge of the gun ownership thing. Hardcore collectors and Hollywood prop arsenals.
And Walter White was very very rich.
ed: oh wait. This was after the nazis found the barrels. never mind.
The two laws you need to know about are NFA act of 38 and FOPA of 86. NFA made all full auto guns made to be on a national registry with a $200 tax. This also include suppressors (aka silencers) and short barreled rifles and shot guns. In 1986 the democrats tried to add a “poison pill” to the FOPA bill that would close the NFA registry on machine guns. It still passed, so that means any legal machine gun a civilian can own had to have been registered pre-1986 (with a few exceptions such as WWII and other historical finds being grandfathered in later).
So if you want a machine gun, it has to be registered pre-86, and you go through an extensive background check by the ATF which takes over half a year usually and pay the $200 tax.
It passed in 86 because machine guns were a niche market. Most people didn’t want to pay the extra cost and wait. Plus very expensive to feed. Now they are mostly a rich person’s game, or someone who saves up and gets one of the lower end ones like an old Sten.
There are a few other work arounds, like you could pay for and go through the process to get a manufactures’ license. Then you could make what ever you want as samples, but only sell to licensed dealers or organizations like the police or military. If you are a class III dealer, you can buy post 86 guns and use them as samples, sell them to police or military, but not sell them to citizens. So the exact same gun made in 1985 and one made in 1988 could cost 10s of thousands of dollars different because of who can own it.
Now all of this is also dependent on state laws. So many states don’t allow private ownership of some or all NFA items or there might be additional permits.
That said, IIRC, the only LEGAL machine gun used in a crime in like the last 30 years was from a cop who used his department issued gun to kill someone. Every other crime where an actual machine gun was used was from people illegally converting semiautos.
You are right the potential for abuse is there, but I could also load up a piper cub with jet fuel and crash into a school or shove a butt plug made of C4 in me on a TWA flight. We shouldn’t be chasing shadows of what could happen.
nail-gun mod?
Surprisingly enough, a water cooled Browning (which would probably fire for longer before jamming) would cost less… http://machinegunpriceguide.com/html/beltfed.html
Have they done the squeegee-battery-car go boom yet?
Well, my philosophy is to make the bad actors go through with putting in the extra effort. There are plenty of ways I could go out in my own blaze of glory, but they would all require a smidgeon of thought and preparation, and maybe an extra stop at the hardware store/gas station/nursery/pool supply store. Who knows, by the time all my errands were complete, the mood might have abandoned me.
Unless I’m facing invading squads of infantry or the zombie hordes, machine guns aren’t useful for self-defense or hunting, and trusting our local eccentric Elmer J. Fudd not to go off on a rampage simply because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t strike me as a compelling excuse to hand him what amounts to a weapon of mass destruction just because he has time and money and hasn’t gotten around to killing anyone yet, wabbit or othewwise.
Mr Fudd is welcome to insert whatever high-explosive he can lay hands on right up there where the sun don’t shine if he’s willing to employ the time and energy to put his plan together. I don’t think he should be able to grab an M60 from the oversized gun safe in his bedroom the first moment he gets sufficiently annoyed by wascally people. Yes, suicide bombs are a very real and serious problem, especially when it comes to political and sectarian violence, but here in the States… hell, even Lynyrd Skynyrd sang against the evils of the Saturday Night Special.
That’s generally my gun-control stance: don’t make it so damn easy to kill. Remember the guy in San Diego who stole a tank from the National Guard? Now that guy put in the effort.
I’m sorry, guys. Wrong thread again. Back to discussing your excellent TV show…
You know, if we put this MythBusters machine gun rig in Google’s self-driving car, we could probably get a billion dollar grant from DARPA for further development.
Also, the additional cost of bacon to wrap around the barrel…
No you couldn’t. TWA ceased to exist 14 years ago.
Well… assuming I get this time machine running.
Really, TWA is gone? Jeeze I am out of it.
