Speaking of dumb ATF agents, I read a story where an ATF “weapons expert” was called in to determine if a particular was an illegally modified machine gun. The agent took the gun (a FAL) and cocked it and dry fired it a bunch of times and declared it to not be a machine gun. He must REALLY be an “expert” if he can determine if a gun is a machine gun or not by dry firing it and not disassembling it to determine if it has been modified to accept an auto sear. I can look at a FAL and tell you within a few seconds if it has an auto sear modification.
No, you can’t. A stock FAL would not have been select fire. The test the ATF was probably doing was the “hammer drop.” As follows: clear and cock the action. pull the trigger and hold it down. re-cock the action letting the bolt go home slowly. if you hear the hammer drop just as the bolt goes into battery it means the gun has been back-fit with FN-LAR internals and/or the semi-auto sear/reset has been shaved. if you have to let the trigger go and pull again to fire then it means the action is correct/semi-auto-————————————you’re welcome.