[Ancesthntr]

“If they do this, then they should compromise by repealing the 1986 Hughes Act which caused the prices of full auto weapons to skyrocket. There is NO REASON for a legally transferable M-16 to cost over 50,000 dollars.”

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Amazingly, you can in theory buy an M-16 that was manufactured at 11:59 P.M. on May 19, 1986 (for $50K or some similarly absurd amount of money), but a functionally identical and virtually indistinguishable M-16 manufactured on the very same assembly line by the very same workers at 12:01 A.M. on May 20, 1986 is prohibited to you - at any price. Where’s the sanity (or, for that matter, the legality) in THAT?

[MPB]

Where’s the sanity (or, for that matter, the legality) in THAT?

It was always intended as a method to dry up the inventory of such weapons, make them increasingly rare so that even criminals would have a hard time getting their hands on a fully automatic weapon.

How'd that work out though? They just buy stolen military grade weapons on the black market, or smuggled from other countries (or maybe even our own government running illegal guns and "losing track" of them. Oops... I guess they didn't count on criminals breaking the law to get what they're after.