Posted on 10/02/2017 8:58:36 AM PDT by doug from upland
Opinion is divided this morning on Twitter among people who, unlike me, know more than the most basic basics about firearms. It’s not a matter of mere curiosity; as you (should) know, fully automatic weapons have been illegal in the U.S. for decades, which is why even mass shooters hellbent on murder unto death never use them. If Stephen Paddock used a machine gun, how on earth did he get it?
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
I’m no expert, many FReepers will be able to answer better than I. That said, you can hear the rate of fire. I can’t imagine a full-auto being any faster, I certainly can’t imagine pulling a trigger that fast, even if the weapon fired two-rounds per pull.
There are at least three competing brands of bump fire stock.
Here is a random video of one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo4kFzECXGs
Full autos are legal with a class III license and a $200 tax stamp for each weapon. Class III license requires FBI in depth background check.
Completely legal but very expensive and require tax stamps. If this guy had multiple select fire weapons at his disposal, follow the money. Retirees don't generally have hundreds of thousands of dollars at their disposal.
Presuming he owned them legally, which we don’t know yet.
Listen VERY closely to the audio. No manufactured fully auto weapon has a variable rate such as the one produced in the videos I have seen. My guess is he is using a semi auto weapon slide fed with a bumper thus rendering the gun fully auto. Once you pull off that first round you can stop until the rounds are expended
Perhaps Obama’s Fast and Furious folks are going....oh s**
No, full auto is not illegal.
What’s legal got to do with what kind of weapon was used? Simply shooting a person dead from a distance is in and of itself a criminal act, absent any prior motive. To rip into a crowd only compounds the criminality, and the type of gun matters little after the first fatality, only that the score is higher if this was in fact an AK converted to “full automatic”. It is possible for a knowledgeable gunsmith, or even a determined amateur, to accomplish this task.
No law would have mattered.
From the audio that I have heard, I wonder if he was possibly using a belt-fed weapon of some kind.
I heard it too. Its clearly full auto
Can’t stop until rounds are expended
And at least the first burst I heard in the video I watched was much more than 30 rounds, closer to 100. So, he was using high capacity drum mags or it was a belt fed rifle.
First let’s find out what it was. The answer to the question will be a lot easier if we know what we’re looking for. The police know what it was now; whether they’re going to tell anyone anytime soon is a matter of conjecture.
There is no doubt from the audio alone automatic weapons were used...
were they built fully auto or converted semi I don’t know.
However, I highly doubt this guy legally owned any automatic weapons.
He was either supplied with them by a hostile/3rd party actor, bought
by the assailant on the black market, or converted by the assailant from semi to full autos...
Time will tell, but if I had to put money on it, I would put better than even odds it was the first one.
They are legal in the United States, just with the $200 tax stamp. The problem is the limited supply, so the cost of the weapon is high. Note: I was offered a chance to buy one last week, but I have no interest in owning or even shooting one. I like to hit on every shot.
In addition to buying an expensive weapon legally and then waiting up to a year to process the paperwork, there are a variety of legal options (bump fire, slide fire, autoglove, etc.) that make a semi-automatic rifle shoot as rapidly as full-auto. There are also a variety of options for illegally converting a semi-automatic rifle to full auto. It's particularly easy if you never plan to shoot semi-auto with the rifle again, which was probably this loser's plan.
Given that there is a video on Youtube showing how to make an AK-47 out of a shovel, I’m thinking it’s just not that hard.
Any remotely competent gunsmith can just make a full auto.
It’s not that hard.
It’s not that hard to make/acquire an autosear.
Getting caught with one is the problem.
I heard the audio and it was full auto. In fact he was rotating to other full auto guns. From the report ,I would guess .223 . Full autos are illegal so laws won’t help. My guess is disassembled AR-15 Which are easily packed and hidden in larger luggage and golf bags etc.
This shows great logistical planning and supply, I believe a full auto can fire 900 RPM so if he was up there 10 minutes in firing mode 50% of the time , he fired over 4000 rounds. There will be quite an investigation into the supply , One report is he had 10 weapons. The reason I suspect ISLAM is their hatred of what they view as Western decadence. This was the case in Orlando at the homosexual bar. In San Bernadino they struck an office party celebrating the birth of our Lord. I’m inclined to be persuaded that this was a jihad attack but time will tell.
Filing certain parts down can give you a full auto weapon, but no ability to stop firing until all rounds are fired. From the video’s I’ve seen/heard, it was full auto, there wasn’t an irregular timing between the shots that would occur if someone was just pulling the trigger as fast as he could.
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