Making something legal but prohibitively expensive does, for all but the rich or well-connected, make something prohibited.
In other words, I’m prohibited from buying that Lamborghini! This is terrible! Where in our Constitution does is say I’m now allowed to have a Lamborghini!
I do know people who legally own fully automatic weapons. None are “rich”. If cost is the criteria, not only am I unconstitutionally barred from owning that Lamborghini but barred from awning a simple bolt action Remington 700.
Poor analogy. A Lamborghini is a high point of quality, precision, hand-crafting and luxury. An M16 is a churned-out, mechanically cheap, mass-produced product for grunts.
Better one: due to artificially limited supply of cars, a VW Golf in decent shape would cost you $250,000 - and that’s at least 20 years old. You can’t even buy a car made after 1986. Dodge Neons, which should be relatively cheap, are simply unavailable.
Machineguns are not expensive because they are expensive to make.
Machineguns are expensive because the supply is horribly limited.
A new M16 should cost about $1000.
A new M16, having sat unfired in a box for over 20 years, will cost you upwards of $20,000.
You can’t even get an M4 - at any price.
The fact that you’re hanging onto the “but machineguns are legal!” argument shows that the gun-grabbers are wise: by providing a tiny loophole, they’ve warded off the “they’re banned” accusation, and get idiots like us arguing over the semantics of availability - right at a point where neither of us can afford such a thing.
Yes, OLD machineguns are legal. After a couple decades of prohibiting new ones, their value as collectibles far exceeds their value as tools.
Yes, OLD machineguns are legal. For most practical purposes, they’re banned. I recently bought an M4LE; it does not have “the switch”, which if not for 922(o) it would have - and for the same very affordable price.