On the status quo and machine guns, I think it's worth pointing out that the recorded number of crimes committed with legal civilian-owned machine guns between 1934 and 1986 is precisely zero. ZERO. But we got the Hughes amendment regardless, which only served to make them astronomically expensive, and thus effectively banned by economics. Ironically, since 1986, there have been TWO crimes committed with legally-owned machine guns. Interestingly, both occurred in Ohio. The total is two crimes in 88 years, which is insanely low. And yet, any talk of loosening controls on machine guns would be met with accusations of us being completely insane. Ironically again, the quickest way to rid the country of bumps stocks, Akins Accelerators, and FRTs would be to repeal Hughes and allow us to buy registered machine guns for reasonable prices.
One note of caution here though. If MGs were legalized tomorrow, their use in crime would go up for the simple reason that they'd be more common. But it wouldn't follow that MGs are causing that crime. Common guns are used in crime more commonly, and that's often used as a statistical sleight of hand to argue for banning them. For example, as homemade guns become more popular, they're showing up at crime scenes more. That doesn't mean that they caused that crime (because one would have to show that that crime wouldn't have happened otherwise), but the ATF is using those stats to push for banning homemade guns.
Exactly. As I'll quote myself from a recent comment elsewhere on the subject: "...nobody wants to be politically crucified for the inevitable crime committed with a suppressed machine gun that will happen after the NFA goes away. Even if it's like the Valentines Day Massacre, where the use of machine guns made no actual difference in the number of dead, the fact that the weapons was previously tightly controlled will be all that's considered."
On the status quo and machine guns, I think it's worth pointing out that the recorded number of crimes committed with legal civilian-owned machine guns between 1934 and 1986 is precisely zero. ZERO. But we got the Hughes amendment regardless, which only served to make them astronomically expensive, and thus effectively banned by economics. Ironically, since 1986, there have been TWO crimes committed with legally-owned machine guns. Interestingly, both occurred in Ohio. The total is two crimes in 88 years, which is insanely low. And yet, any talk of loosening controls on machine guns would be met with accusations of us being completely insane. Ironically again, the quickest way to rid the country of bumps stocks, Akins Accelerators, and FRTs would be to repeal Hughes and allow us to buy registered machine guns for reasonable prices.
Yup. Ironically, the examples of legally-owned MGs being used in crimes were police or military using their issued weapons: https://gunmagwarehouse.com/blog/have-legally-owned-automatic-weapons-been-used-in-crime/
One note of caution here though. If MGs were legalized tomorrow, their use in crime would go up for the simple reason that they'd be more common. But it wouldn't follow that MGs are causing that crime. Common guns are used in crime more commonly, and that's often used as a statistical sleight of hand to argue for banning them. For example, as homemade guns become more popular, they're showing up at crime scenes more. That doesn't mean that they caused that crime (because one would have to show that that crime wouldn't have happened otherwise), but the ATF is using those stats to push for banning homemade guns.
Exactly. As I'll quote myself from a recent comment elsewhere on the subject: "...nobody wants to be politically crucified for the inevitable crime committed with a suppressed machine gun that will happen after the NFA goes away. Even if it's like the Valentines Day Massacre, where the use of machine guns made no actual difference in the number of dead, the fact that the weapons was previously tightly controlled will be all that's considered."