Selective fire AR15

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Wolfsbane

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The Hughes Amendment blocks civilian purchases of selective fire AR15, which prior to 1986, were available to them.

Hypothetically speaking, you're a law enforcement or non military government entity. You're purchasing selective fire AR15s. Who is/are the company(ies) manufacturing and selling to you? You're not buying or receiving surplus military equipment.

Because obviously not all of the myriad of AR manufacturers are making selective fire lowers. The majority are semi auto only servicing the civilian market.

I'm working on a piece demonstrating selective fire ARs are not available to general public.
 
I'm working on a piece demonstrating selective fire ARs are not available to general public.
Selective fire ARs are indeed available to the general public. You just have to buy one that was made and registered prior to May 19th, 1986, which means prices are rather high.
 
Hypothetically speaking, you're a law enforcement or non military government entity. You're purchasing selective fire AR15s. Who is/are the company(ies) manufacturing and selling to you? You're not buying or receiving surplus military equipment.
I haven’t looked into it, but I’ll bet lots of the major manufactures have full-auto lines that are available to law enforcement. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is LMT: their Defender series has their regular semi-auto lower and their Guardian series is their full-auto line that they sell to military and law enforcement.
 
Selective fire ARs are indeed available to the general public. You just have to buy one that was made and registered prior to May 19th, 1986, which means prices are rather high.
Don't forget the waiting around part either.

OP: Your "piece" is flawed from the word go. Select-fire and fully automatic weapons made before May 1986 are available to the general public. Some quick research on your favorite search engine will point you in the proper direction.
 
Don't forget the waiting around part either
True, but I was just pointing out the specifics of machine gun ownership compared to other NFA firearms. Besides, I’ll bet the 10+ month tax stamp turnaround is a lot easier for most people to handle than the $20,000+ price tag of a transferable full-auto AR-15.
 
Where is one going to find NEW, CURRENT PRODUCTION selective fire AR15s, that were built and registered before 1986 that you can purchase in VOLUME, in 2019?

I'd REALLY like to know.

Selective fire ARs are indeed available to the general public. You just have to buy one that was made and registered prior to May 19th, 1986, which means prices are rather high.
 
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How is it flawed? I'd REALLY like to know where is one can purchase NEW, CURRENT PRODUCTION selective fire AR15s, that were built and registered before 1986 purchase in VOLUME in 2019?

Don't forget the waiting around part either.

OP: Your "piece" is flawed from the word go. Select-fire and fully automatic weapons made before May 1986 are available to the general public. Some quick research on your favorite search engine will point you in the proper direction.
 
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Where is one going to find NEW, CURRENT PRODUCTION selective fire AR15s, that were built and registered before 1986 that you can purchase in VOLUME?

I'd REALLY like to know.
You seem to have taken offense at my comment. There’s no need to be offended, we’re having a civil conversation here. In your first post you didn’t seem to fully understand what the Hughes Amendment did, so @Havok7416 and I simply pointed out the factually incorrect statements you made. You never said anything about new production in your first post, you simply said the following:

The Hughes Amendment blocks civilian purchases of selective fire AR15, which prior to 1986, were available to them.
No, the Hughes Amendment doesn’t block civilian purchase of selective fire AR-15s. It simply blocked any post-1986 production of transferable ones. Existing registered selective fire AR-15s were not blocked from purchase. So this statement of yours is not correct.

I'm working on a piece demonstrating selective fire ARs are not available to general public.
But, like we already pointed out, they are available to the general public. So again, this statement of yours is not correct.
 
Any FFL with an 07 can make a select fire ar15...its not transferable of course.

I would imagine any and ALL current AR makers have the ability to make select fire guns, so they can try to sell to entities that CAN buy new guns.
 
The Hughes Amendment blocks civilian purchases of selective fire AR15, which prior to 1986, were available to them.
...
I'm working on a piece demonstrating selective fire ARs are not available to general public.

Your premise is flawed because the Hughes Amendment did not block civilian purchase of machine guns, it blocks only the transfer of NEW machine guns to civilians. Select fire AR15s ARE available to the general public as long as they were registered before the cutoff, just at very high prices (with NFA registration).

How is it flawed? I'd REALLY like to know where is one can purchase NEW, CURRENT PRODUCTION selective fire AR15s, that were built and registered before 1986 purchase in VOLUME in 2019?

The AR15 design has been around with very little change to the lower since the1960s. Early models are technically "Curio and Relic" qualified on the basis of age alone. You can very easily have a pre-86 AR lower with whatever new upper you want and it would be very hard to tell that the gun was 30+ years old.

If you're asking a basic question on where do law enforcement agencies purchase machine guns, the answer is that there are a bunch of 07/02 FFL/SOTs (manufacturers of NFA weapons). This allows the company to build machine guns for sale to qualified purchasers (like gov agencies) or for testing, R&D, etc.

For a company of any real size already manufacturing guns, the additional cost for the SOT is negligible. The technical differences between building a semi-only and a FA capable AR lower are even smaller for a machinist who understands the design.

@newfalguy101 the 07 FFL also needs a 02 SOT in order to make NFA weapons :thumbup:
 
[QUOTE="Telekinesis, post: 11132202, member:

@newfalguy101 the 07 FFL also needs a 02 SOT in order to make NFA weapons :thumbup:[/QUOTE]

Yup, you are correct, my mistake


Although, ironically, enough, all that is needed to gunsmith one is an 01...
 
How is it flawed? I'd REALLY like to know where is one can purchase NEW, CURRENT PRODUCTION selective fire AR15s, that were built and registered before 1986 purchase in VOLUME in 2019?
I don’t think this sentence makes sense. How can “current production” guns have been made prior to 1986?
 
I don’t think this sentence makes sense. How can “current production” guns have been made prior to 1986?
I think that’s his point. In response to our corrections, he appears to be claiming that he was referring to current production guns in his first post when he mentioned the restrictions put in place by the Hughes Amendment. I’ll take his word for that; maybe that’s what he meant. But it’s not what he actually said.
 
I have seen full auto Bushmaster carbines that were brand new in 2005 in Colombia, elsewhere, I have seen Rock River, LMT, LWRC, and of course Colt- none were property of any military.
 
I'm working on a piece demonstrating selective fire ARs are not available to general public.
I'm a little puzzled about where you're going with this. The "general public" is not "law enforcement" or "government entity." The latter categories would have no trouble getting full-auto AR's, from a variety of vendors.

As to the true "general public," in theory it's possible to get one. But practically, you have the following factors to contend with:
1. Scarcity due to the May 19, 1986, cutoff date of the Hughes Amendment.
2. Astronomically high prices resulting from this scarcity.
3. A confusing collection of state laws. Many states ban them entirely. Others have strange rules, like Connecticut which allows full auto but bans selective fire. Seven states have the somewhat inscrutable "Uniform Machine Gun Act."
4. Federal registration and transfer tax.
5. And last but not least, a months-long wait for federal approval of the transfer.

So the answer to your question is that selective-fire AR ownership is not practical for 99% of the population. Somebody really has to want one badly. And then the question becomes "why?" because a full-automatic AR is really not that much more effective, as a gun, than its semiautomatic counterpart.
 
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So the answer to your question is that selective-fire AR ownership is not practical for 99% of the population. Somebody really has to want one badly. And then the question becomes "why?" because a full-automatic AR is really not that much more effective, as a gun, than its semiautomatic counterpart.
Because it goes to "11". lol
 
Hypothetically speaking, you're a law enforcement or non military government entity. You're purchasing selective fire AR15s. Who is/are the company(ies) manufacturing and selling to you? You're not buying or receiving surplus military equipment. .
Why not?
Law enforcement agencies routinely are "loaned" surplus military firearms through the Defense Logistics Agency:https://www.dla.mil/DispositionServices/Offers/Reutilization/LawEnforcement/Weapons.aspx


Because obviously not all of the myriad of AR manufacturers are making selective fire lowers. The majority are semi auto only servicing the civilian market.
I'll bet you any firearm manufacturer would be delighted to provide any state/local/federal law enforcement agency with any machine gun they desire at a cost competitive with semiautomatic AR's.
 
Actually for a while there it was cheaper for the government to buy select fire/ full auto than it was for regular folks to buy a semi-auto. Currently I'd guess they are about the same price, or even cheaper for the semi-auto.
 
Wolfsbane, if you're curious about current full auto prices for MIL\LEA you can call GT Distributors gtdist.com @ 1-800-775-5996. They do a lot of agency transfers and they're happy to talk. I will warn you, when I call them, I'm on the phone for awhile because we always end up chatting for a while.
 
I don’t think this sentence makes sense. How can “current production” guns have been made prior to 1986?
Only the receiver had to be registered before the deadline. Manufacturers scrambled to register receivers. One was able to register many 'tube' receivers, and sold guns made from them for a long time.
 
If you go to many gun websites that sell the civilian version of those rifles, you can usually search around and either find a LEO link or a LEO sales contact email.

Most of the big players will offer any barrel length and fire control group that the department wants. For certain, Colt, HK, and FN. I am fairly sure that Daniel Defense and Knights also had rifles on the table the last time I attended a T&E. There are likely many, many others.

Also, just to be clear, some of what police departments get does come directly from used military stuff. There is a reason that the phrase “militarization of police” is popular in the news. Until about a decade ago some of our city rifles were Vietnam issued Colts.

Also to be clear, for liability reasons and the general view of the public, from my experience many law enforcement departments no longer allow even specialized units to carry anything with burst or auto. A lot of the Feds have M4s, probably just due to the supply line, but when I was in (over a decade ago) we had instructions to not ever switch them to full auto.
 
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Also, just to be clear, some of what police departments get does come directly from used military stuff.
That's right. Given the massive transfer of surplus military equipment to civilian law enforcement agencies, it's hard to see how manufacturers could compete directly in that market.

Another odd fact, from what I understand, is that some of these civilian agencies, after receiving their allotment of M16's from the government, proceed to convert them to fire semiautomatically only. They're still legally machine guns, but they don't actually have that capability. The thinking, I suppose, is that police agencies generally don't need automatic fire, and it's not worth the risk of having a full automatic in every squad car.
 
Another odd fact, from what I understand, is that some of these civilian agencies, after receiving their allotment of M16's from the government, proceed to convert them to fire semiautomatically only.
That’s been my (limited) experience. At the shop where I worked right outside Seattle, we had a local SWAT team trade in all their MP5s for ARs. The funny thing I noticed was all the MP5s were legally machine guns but they had semi-auto-only trigger packs. Since they were nontransferable machine guns the best way for us to make money off of them was to cut up the receivers and sell the rest as parts kits.
 
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