From what I understand from media reporting, it is too early to discuss gun-control. 
12 Likes
Indeed the idea that the military should give every soldier the capacity for full automatic fire can largely be laid at the feet of one man: S.L.A. Marshall ( S.L.A. Marshall - Wikipedia ) He claimed that during WWII most soldiers never fired their guns, and indeed that most of the firing that was done was done by people armed with machine guns, rather than rifles. His claims have later been shown to be more anecdotal than data-driven. And it may well be that the fact that most machine guns were crew served, with a gunner and an assistant gunner and the role that might have played in persuading soldiers to take a shot. But his thinking was very influential after WWII and one of the things that led to the development of the M-14 which was capable of firing on full automatic despite being almost uncontrollable when that was done.
11 Likes
I had not heard this before. However it begs the question how giving everyone full auto solves that problem? The Wikipedia entry was an interesting read, but it didn’t really answer that question (not that I expect you to either, unless you happen to know),
8 Likes
I’ve also seen (indirectly) ads for suppressors, which are also illegal unless one pays the stamp for it; they were being sold as ‘oil filters’ but if you saw the thing you knew instantly that it was a can for a rifle.
Their ‘haha only kidding’ excuse is that they are for airsoft toys.
4 Likes
It promoted prevalent “spray and pray” behavior, where carefully aimed shooting became less common. After the Vietnam war it was noted this kind of blind automatic firing was wasteful of ammunition and not particularly effective. Military battle rifles were changed to fire short bursts instead.
4 Likes
I should have been clearer. He maintained, based on anecdotal evidence, that in any given battle, 75% of soldiers didn’t fire their weapons, and that most of the ones that did, were equipped with fully automatic weapons. So his conclusion was that one of the ways to get more soldiers to fire their weapons was to give them fully automatic weapons. So along with more realistic training, like shooting at briefly visible silhouettes rather than bulls eye targets, those became the norm. Marshall was very influential but also quite controversial.
A longer piece on him and his influence
13 Likes
When covid first hit, I was reading about how there was an explosion of gun buying by people worried about some fantasy apocalypse scenario. (Also teenagers stuck at home with too much time on their hands buying illegal guns and gun mods over the internet.) Immediately the murder rate increased, but now that people are out and about and interacting, the murder rate is apparently shooting up (as it were) even more.
I’ve seen a lot of deranged attempts by the right to come up with alternate explanations. E.g. blaming “defunding the police” for this, but that’s clearly nonsense because a) police haven’t been defunded anywhere, b) even if they were, there’s no correlation between police funding and crimes (i.e. more cops don’t decrease the murder rate), and c) the murder rate increase happened just after covid started, not after BLM even mainstreamed the idea of defunding the police. I’ve also seen even more deranged right-wingers blaming Biden… apparently believing he controls whether states release prisoners… The truly deranged right-wingers are responding to the increase in gun violence by making it easier for people to carry guns without restrictions, thus even further increasing gun violence. All of that to deny what’s now undeniable - that more guns equals more shootings and deaths. This shit? This makes it all worse.
Apparently so, because the video did mention it.
Depends if you’re trying to hit an individual or just anyone in a crowd. (Or, you know, just aiming for an individual by themselves or one in a crowd.) There’s been a nasty spate of mass shootings in the last couple of weeks, caused by shooters who were targeting a specific person, but in crowded areas - most (and in some cases all) of the people who were shot weren’t the intended targets.
8 Likes
Pretty much what I meant.
How accurate the thing is for target shooting at a distance matters very little if some one is walking into a packed club and opening fire from feet away.
Likewise the bump stocks/automatic fire are blah di blah line with Vegas tends to ignore that the guy obviously knew that and made allotments. Most of the shots he fired were aimed, most of the guns semi-automatics. Even the bump stocked guns were fired from a bench, with bipods, scopes, forward grips and other equipment meant to maximize accuracy.
4 Likes
There were several programs the military tried to make the individual soldier more effective in combat. Project SPEW and SALVO were two of them, where they wanted to try to get multiple projectiles from a single shot to hit the target more than once. Burst and full auto modes were also created for this same reason. A burst of 3 rounds had a bigger chance of hitting multiple times, in theory.
While M4s and M16 in the military still have full auto or burst mode, it isn’t used very often, from what I have read. The role of full auto on an individual level is the Squad Automatic Weapon M249 (SAW) which is belt fed and made for sustained fire.
So I am sure I have stated in this in the past, but for anyone unclear about it:
Full auto guns have been under the National Firearms Act since 1934. From 1934-1986 you could buy or create and register a full auto machine gun with a $200 tax (an astronomical amount in 1934). (Note, this is the Federal law, not all states allow NFA items.) Later the stipulation of background check was added for sale and transfer. This would later include specific parts that could be registered to create machine gun, like auto sears. As those articles posted above, it used to be those could be bought freely and were not restricted, but one would have to register the firearm if installed.
In 1986 Reagan signed the FOPA after a “poison pill” of closing the machine gun registry was inserted into the bill. That means no new full autos could be added to the registry after the law went into effect. This has made registered machine guns and parts valuable and have consistently been climbing in price.
The work around to this is to become a licensed FFL and SOT (Special Occupational Taxpayer). A class 2 can manufacture NFA items, and a class 3 can deal in them. From there you can actually make and register machine guns, suppressors, or short barreled rifles and shotguns. This is expensive and highly monitored by the ATF, but you can make what you want and use them, and even sell them to approved organizations such as the police and military. Some people do it just to make and play with expensive things, and others do so to run say a rental business at a range. (the guy featured in the video has his licensees to be able to make the NFA items shown in the video) But this system is all highly regulated and has all the oversight people many people who want more gun control claim to want.
So obviously, the problem highlighted in the video are people just not doing any of that. And while jerry rigged braided coat hangers have long been a thing, the proliferation of well made, machined parts from Asia is new. 
Yes, I have seen those before, on Facebook and elsewhere. They are also sold as “solvent traps”, which honestly, if you have had a wire brush spritz everything with solvent after poking through the muzzle, it is a useful tool.
But yes, the difference between a solvent trap and a suppressor is a few holes. You CAN buy one of those, legally fill out a Form 1, and once approved drill those holes and create your own suppressor. But, the ATF has been weird about that and have changed their mind on what they consider a suppressor not, concluding some “solvent traps” are actually suppressors. (They even have made weird claims to suppressor makers about baffle creation and how a box full of baffles awaiting to be inserted and welded in a suppressor body, are still considered suppressors some how.)
There are also examples of an adapter that has muzzle threads on one side, and thread for an oil filter on the other. These have been around for decades, both registered and made on a lathe somewhere.
The problem with the ATF is:
-
They make shit up. They basically can redefine what is or isn’t a thing.
-
They inconsistently say this or that is a thing, making previously OKed items suddenly illegal.
-
They aren’t clear in their definitions, so someone creating an item that meets the previous guideline may be reviewed and then classified as an NFA item.
-
They have inconsistent enforcement, where one office may be ok with something, and not another.
I recently saw a video from a lawyer in Washington State, where people were filing a form 1 and registering a solvent trap they want to turn into a suppressor, getting the forms back approved, and then having the ATF walk it back and say that the original item wasn’t legal and to turn in any registered suppressors - except some ATF agents are OK with them as long as the Form 1s check out.
2 Likes
Gotta admit, writing this in the form of a BoingBoingShop post is hilarious 
I love it.
4 Likes
This is one too.
And this:
Catch some time!
1 Like
This is the nature of law and government- you define things and those definitions are the beginning section of a regulation… Your understanding or the technology changed - you update the regulations.
People wishing to not comply with the law find weasel word ways to get around those regulations- they use that purported lack of clarity to undermine the original regulations.
Back to revising the regulations.
4 Likes
The thing is - they aren’t updating the regulations. The regulations for what is regulated under the NFA have more or less stayed the same since 1934 (with some additions further tightening laws). They are changing how they apply and enforce those laws, and how they interpret the law for enforcement. New technology SHOULD require new regulations, instead they are making their own calls on what is what.
There are examples where by the letter of a law the product does not fall under the NFA definition of a machine gun, but the ATF has none-the-less classified it as such. In such cases one should, as you said, go “Back to revising the regulations.”
In most cases, that isn’t usually what is going on. Most companies producing product are doing so in good faith. They want to stay within the bounds of the law, because not only are their possible consequences, but literally all of their product is destroyed if it is ruled as illegal. It is not a good way to do business. They want a letter from the ATF saying that their product is allowed. Which the ATF does some times. Other times it won’t comment. In recent years it has been more and more reluctant to give pre-approvals and comment on specifics of legality, but then will later hit the manufacture with a cease and desist after declaring it in violation. Or even give approval at one point, and change their mind a year or two later. No new technology - its a new decision on what they think is OK.
Or like in my sample above, where suddenly they want baffles to be somehow registered - even though nothing has changed in how suppressors are made in the last 100 years or so, but they have come up with a different way they want them to do things for… reasons? And it doesn’t seem they have requested this of every manufacture.
Companies are literally asking for clear, consistent rulings so they know what the limits are, and the ATF has not provided that in many cases.
Of course this is all on the legal side of manufacturing. The stuff in the video is all illegally manufactured, imported, sold, and installed. No weasel words needed, they are flagrantly flouting the law.
Regulations are updated through the process of interpretation, issuing new guidance, issuing letters and issuing Q&A’s. Not just wholesale rewriting of regulations.
This is the case for ALL regulations- not just ATF.
I’m sorry- we completely disagree on the interpretation of the intentions of these businesses and people. And I believe that you are skeptical of intentions of businesses, organizations and people who aren’t in the weapons business. Just not here.
There is no clarity when new products are introduced that didn’t exist previously. Like say bump stocks. They weren’t in the regulations when they didn’t exist. They needed to be considered when they did. They clearly are an attempt to mimic an automatic weapon- that’s why they were built in the first place. But people try to disingenuously pretend that wasn’t the intent. It was. Much sophistry is employed to try to deny that fact while at the same time marketing that feature.
This is the nature of any business that seeks to get around regulations of dangerous products. Whether VW diesels, pfos, ozone depleting chemicals or pintos. It’s the same for every industry.
8 Likes
“FOR NOVELTY DISPLAY ONLY”
heck of a loophole.
4 Likes
Yeah, this is a normal par of any semi-auto or auto gun. Always has been. People have always been able to machine auto-sears and fit them in semi auto guns to convert to full auto.
I don’t keep up with this sort of stuff, so I don’t know if a 3d printed sear would actually hold up in use, but TBH, I could make one with a schematic/diagram, and my garage metalworking shop. People in remote villages in pakistan make them with files and hand tools.
Honestly, not a big fan of the fact that the majority of people who actually do machine an auto sear “just in case” are likely the last people I want having a gun converted to full auto, but this is nothing new.
This is a problem that will exist as long as this type of gun exists.
1 Like
Not minimizing the problem, but the terminology is misleading. They keep referring to these devices as “machine guns” when they’re only a very small part of the finished product. It’s equivalent to taking a triggerless gun and adding a trigger, but calling the trigger a “gun” to make it sound more scary (and easier to legislate).
It’s only a matter of time before somebody makes a legitimate, non-firearm product which requires one part made of metal which just happens to be the exact shape as an autosear. How will they justifiably outlaw those products?
How can they possibly ban thalidomide if I rename it a floor wax?
11 Likes
Presuming you mean ‘In the military’, it’s to help overcome the normal cultural aversion to killing. Aimed fire reinforces that you’re trying to take a life whereas spraying automatic fire can be more easily rationalized as (and often is) “keeping their heads down”. It’s a further progression along the spectrum from using a knife to launching a missile.
Other unforeseen consequences of Marshall’s erroneous influences were to make ‘dehumanizing’ of the enemy more of a thing in basic training, etc. Much of this eventually boomeranged into more cases of what is now called PTSD.
5 Likes
You’re right, but also wrong.
It used to be that a finished firearm was what was considered the machine gun. Later that got reinterpreted for any part(s) that would readily convert a firearm into a machine gun. The ATF considers a drop in autosear a “machine gun”. It is a bit confusing, but it goes like this.
You could have an M16 with the full auto trigger pack and bolt carrier group, and that whole rifle is registered as a machine gun.
Or - you could have a drop in autosear or a lightning link that is serialized and that part is the “machine gun”. You could technically drop it into any appropriate rifle and make it work.
When the 1986 law was closing the registry, lot of companies started to churn out the cheap and easy to make autosears and registered them.
If you did that, had a part that could function as an autosear in one firearm, but did a different function in another, you would still have that part declared a machine gun and have them confiscated. So don’t do that. Redesign that part.
When it comes to common items that can be made to create a machine gun, you can’t readily outlaw that part, but the use.
Someone wrote the ATF about a product that basically boiled down to a shoestring with a ring at the end, which on a rifle with a reciprocated bolt handle would force reset the trigger and cause it to emulate full auto. They said you can’t do that. So their opinion letter basically outlawed shoe strings - which of course you can’t actually outlaw. You could just prosecute someone using a shoestring in that way.
As others pointed up thread, you can bend a coat hanger into a jerry rigged AR autosears. Nearly every American has a potential autosear in their closet (except for those who have no wire hangers!). But when it comes to this, you have to show intent and capability. If you bent one to shape but had no AR, then you just have a bent piece of wire. Bend one, install one, and show it off on tiktok, that will get you a felony. Any other combination and it is a grey area.
