Steve brings up very valid points. I would not enter into a home invasion wearing armor. I do not walk around like that. The plan is to don armor prior to law enforcement entering my house. Had I legally shot someone, I doubt I would be laying in my tub with the armor on. My personal rule is once you fire the weapon you need to move! If the LEOs are searching and clearing my house, I am putting on a seat belt (armor).
Posted on Wednesday, December 05, 2018 - 12:10 am:
It's not licensing. It's a tax stamp and registration. $200 for the privilege and several months of waiting. It's no big deal. I wouldn't mind another stamp or two.
Posted on Wednesday, December 05, 2018 - 02:58 pm:
At current rate of legislation, all guns sold in Europe will require sound suppressors, and they will be NFA items in the U.S. which will lead to a whole new series of red neck jokes.
"How can you tell an American redneck? He says "WHAT!?!" A lot"
Posted on Wednesday, December 05, 2018 - 11:44 pm:
NFA item. You pay a $200 tax when you buy one. You sell it? The next guy pays a $200 tax, etc.
Some years ago, this made machine gun collecting a weird fad, because the logic ( hah! ) was the items always increased in price, so they were an awesome investment.
Dumb, wrong, and no. The price always goes up, IF you can get your paid price plus the $200 you paid, AND the next guy doesn't mind coughing up $400 more than the market would bear, when you bought it.
Now, with a rare item that isn't replaceable, like a Vickers gun, that... almost works. It's as inflationary as all get out, and the market priced itself into the stratosphere. And the GWH Bush signed law forbids any NEW machine guns, so they are an oddball, artificial world all by themselves, economically. A Thompson that went for $500-800 in the 1980's ( if you could find one that cheap ) is now multiple thousands.
But a suppressor? Why would I pay my tax, and your tax, and the retail price, when I can just get a new one, for retail plus my tax? Thus short barreled rifles, suppressors, etc, tend to sell at a loss or not at all.
And, if you burn one out, or break it, run it over with a truck? You still have the legal obligation to keep the parts and paperwork, unless you take it to the government and get that individual item declared destroyed. And you don't get a penny for it. ( I don't think you have to pay another $200, but maybe a filing fee. )
And.... you can't cross state lines without "permission", meaning you have to file paperwork to take it to a range in another state, and there are states like NY that don't allow them at all, and will arrest you for possession and try to throw away the key ( seriously, they love to go overboard, you, you terrorist! ) if you are stupid enough to come to my foreign Imperial Dictatorship with a NFA item.
Now Rick? He lives in a magical land where the laws are reasonable and not all that bad. That can change overnight.
That's why he's all "just pay the tax and wait a few months, easy peasy" ( kidding, a bit )
He can have items my Governor would send the State Troopers to burn my house down around my ears with an armored assault with waves of flaming tear gas grenades to soften me up. Like a rifle with a barrel shorter than 16 inches and change.... very, very important change.
The above is not a joke. It's not even much of an exaggeration. The tear gas grenades don't emit much flame you can see during the day. Much. They do burn the house down pretty efficiently, since they tend to bounce around and come to rest under the sofa or against the drapes, as the police aim them to bounce off the ceiling, both to not shoot you in the face ( a secondary concern ) and to make it hard to find them and throw them back.
All it would take is an anonymous tip I had a machine gun. Which, I hasten to add, I do not. Nor any other banned item, no matter how I feel about the banning. Not worth the hassle.
The best thing about having a life long habit of buying guns and giving them away, to close friends, is when the New Governor seized power, I saw the writing on the wall, looked at my collection, and gave away almost all of it, some bits as far away as Alabama. I never had the attitude that guns were an investment.
I pondered when President Obama was soapboxing for that " loophole that isn't one" law, why the hoopla? The president( the last one, this one, or the next one), could just issue executive order number blah blah blah, that NICS approvals will be available to the general public via an 800 number or website. Not the actual criminal records of the prospective buyer, but just a thumbs up or thumbs down on a sale. No private data would be provided beyond what the prospective buyer was willing to provide the seller.
Putting aside the fact that government bureaucracy can screw up darn near anything, and the cost of such a program would be enormous. I think we can agree that if this "loophole law" actually passed, the NICS system would see the increase in call volume anyway.
The difference in my example is now my call to NICS is optional, and I don't have to pay a third party to transfer ownership of my private property. It certainly doesn't need another law, and might not even need an executive order. It's possible the Justice Department could do it as a matter of "promulgated rules" if the newly elected liberal congress gave them enough money to run the program.
But we all know its not about guns, its about control.....
I can't give a citation for it, but I thought that a large number of the NICS rejections are mistakes. The 800 number plan would need an appeal system.
My guess is that the third parties don't make a lot of profit from transferring guns, but that business would drop off.
I don't know about most...but a large number are overturned on appeal. To my understanding, it's based on the arrest record, not the final disposition. Sometimes the state will investigate the record...other times they'll simply issue a denial based on the nature of the offense. There are also times where people are denied for simply having similar information to a prohibited person...and others still who are delayed or denied for having no record at all.
I know they only prosecute purchasers who have an open arrest warrant.
The system has failed, is incorrect, and inefficient enough that it needs to either be revamped or done away with. It's easily circumvented and not maintained properly, currently.
How likely is it that the confiscations would start in the urban spots where the most gun violence happens? You know, getting the most bang for your buck.
That's Racist as all get out! And that inherent, built in racism has been the theme on disarming you for more than a century. Urban means black, in the Democrat Party playbook.
And if you chart how hard it is to buy a gun for self defense in a city, I bet it matches the homicide rate pretty closely.
If those idiots really felt that innocent black men were being gunned down in the streets by racist cops, they'd be handing out cheap guns and CCW permits like it was candy. It's another make believe excuse to take your rights and get the sheep to keep voting left.
High praise from a fairly experienced civilian who has fired his share of machine guns. His take on the Johnson light machine gun is that it beats you up out of proportion to the power of the cartridge.
The only U.S. troops who officially used the Stoner were the SEALS. and the general feeling has been that it was too prone to get dirty, too delicate, and just plain too weird to be an issue Army gun..... but the SEALS are crazy and can keep the gun clean, sleep with it, and loved it.
Tales from the SEALS say they slept with it, ( had to have it clean and safe and at hand when the attack came on the hooch ) kept it clean, and that nothing else had the firepower and accuracy the Stoner gave them.
The modular part of the design was, in a way, not needed, since no one ever actually changed after they set it up for belt fed with the Seal Mk23 box. Except the armorers, who bolted them onto anything that moved as a force multiplier. Helicopters, jeeps, Piper Cubs, when you went to support the SEALS in Vietnam, they'd bolt on more firepower.
Several of the shooters in the Stoner videos use their left shoulders for the stock. Is it because the beltfed ejects brass on the left? Or are some of the video segments flipped?
The operating system of the AK/Garand with the multi lug bolt of the AR-15 in a modular chassis inspired by the MG42.
You only ever hear about Eugene Stoner, but it was a team effort. Robert Fremont & Jim Sullivan did much of the work adopting the AR-10 design to 5.56, ditto the Stoner 62/63 ( 7.62 /5.56 NATO ) and the AR-18 was a group effort.
The AR-18, designed for a "lower tech base" manufacturing process than the AR-15/M-16 forged aluminum receiver, ( and because the patents were sold to Colt, for the M-16 ) used stamped sheet metal, a piston system with multi lug bolt, and is actually the Father to many very successful military rifles in service world wide.
The military's of the world use AK clones, from many countries, AR-15 clones, ( once just American, but now Germany & Canada ) and AR-18 children in abundance. The new Chinese issue rifle is a polymer shell over a '18 based action. As are most of the polymer & bullpup designs out there.