"Lemaymiami;wasn't that era when the MAC10 was a part of the cocaine wars?"
...and the Uzi & Tec 9 and all the other evul gunz that were eventually targeted with the open-bolt-ban-by-ATF-fiat, AWB, and closure of the machinegun registry. I've always wondered how truly prevalent such guns were during the unrest of that period compared to other eras (or if the much higher crime rate meant an increased number of individual examples to blame). Prohibition times press and police were notorious for inflating the usage of machineguns in an effort to demonize them, when then as now, small concealable pocket guns were the choice of villains.
If there was a reason it wasn't this way in the '70s-'90s, it'd be worth looking into why (was it just the new cheapo open bolt gun tech of the age made them more obtainable, was it just a 'fad' sweeping the underworld, was drug crime special in some way that required heavier firepower in the course of business?). Whatever it was, it sure wasn't the guns themselves, since they're still around, and still easy to make, yet burp guns have fallen off the radar for the most part (I suspect illegally converted AR15s are probably the weapon of choice for that class of bad guy, these days, which is apparently big business in CA; the EP Armory raid by the ATF started with them investigating the source materials used by an illicit shot masquerading as a BIY gun store, when in reality they were doing
all the customer's work, including modifications for auto sears and short barrels
. That's why the ATF has to crack down on 80%'s, you see; illegal machine guns :banghead
TCB