Posted on 10/20/2007 8:52:35 PM PDT by sig226
Randy Powell has a .50-caliber machine gun he would like to sell you — but he can't afford to.
The monster, sitting in a cage in back of his gun store and shooting range in Lawrenceville, can cut down a tree — and could easily fetch $30,000 in a perfectly legal sale. But for Powell, the sale would be the equivalent of hawking a Picasso or vintage wine.
The gun increases in value exponentially each year.
"I bought that gun for $10,000 about 10 years ago," he said. "I could make a lot of money if I sold it but it's an investment more than anything. There is no wholesale market. If I want another one, I may have to pay more than that."
If Clifford Harris Jr., the budding hip-hop mogul known as T.I., had lived a more law-abiding life he could have used his fortune to legally buy the .50-caliber, the silencers, the M60, Uzis or other machine guns that Powell has in his shop. "It is a real adventure to shoot it," said Robert Thornton, a machine-gun expert, of the .50-caliber. "You can hear the bullets strike the target 1,000, 1,500, 2,000 yards away."
Instead Harris is facing federal charges that include illegally possessing three machine guns and two silencers and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. He pleaded not guilty to the weapons charges in court on Friday.
Most people, while they have the right, don't have the ability to buy a machine gun like Powell's. For instance, a Heckler &Koch MP5K machine pistol would fetch $15,000 on the civilian market, Powell said.
(Excerpt) Read more at ajc.com ...
Guess again. This market is definitely finite and supply is squeezed. But there is no shortage of buyers. Look at the law of supply: When supplies are down and demand is up....prices are up. Supply is never going to improve since the law that governs it was reformed in 1986.
When the price of survival exceeds the price of illegality, such as after a major catastrophic event, the price of these items will drop substantially.
In fact under such a circumstance, the prices will rise still further. So will the price of ammo. Of course that's for the legal markets. If you want to try sniping the national guard that becomes a whole 'nother issue. Of course by that time (heck this is prolly true NOW) most national guardsmen will be veterans of several combat scenarios in different theatres. That makes taking them out a far riskier propisition!
I hunt mosquitos, when I'm not on the boat, fishing for plankton.
When government tyranny crosses the line into criminal actions, then they make criminals of all citizens.
In this case, the law deserves no respect and should be openly discarded.
The idiots who are creating this situation are obviously ignorant of history or they would have learned from prohibition.
Such is the consequence of permitting ignorant fools the power of federal office.
Depends what you are hunting. here commie commie commie.
If they're using a .50 BMG, let them have the money!
YEAH! If TI hadn't unfairly and unjustly been turned into a felon by "the man" due ONLY to the color of his skin and the way he dresses, he'd be able to use his fortune to buy the same dangerous "toys" that the rich white folks are, unfairly, able to buy.
TIME TO MARCH AL AND JESSE!!!
I was referring to the fact that if illegality no longer mattered, weapons could be converted for $50 or less. The legal ones will, of course, always be expensive and rare.
If legality is no longer an issue it would seem wasteful to bother converting semis to full unless you're just dropping in a selector switch. Why not just gather from the source? That's the usual source of supply for any budding insurgency.
Well, you have a good point, but for the record I have no plans to ever buy one, steal one nor illegally convert one, as even in the direst chaos, I would rather use ammo sparingly and accurately.
Since the government never appealed the Rock Island Armory decision, shouldn't it be legal to register them within that district? Or does the feral government simply ignore that court ruling?
I don’t know about that particular ruling, but I do know the Feds ignore laws they don’t like.
Well, more and more, so do I. If it is good enough for my employees....
HKs are pretty easy, from what I hear. Same with uzi.
ROFLMAO! Me, too....buddy. Me too. Actually the term is spray and pray for a reason. If I ever make somebody mad enough to take shots at me, I hope he's on full auto so I'll have a reasonable chance (I almost said shot) at escaping unscathed. OTOH, if I've made somebody mad enough to use a scope sighted rifle and he knows what he's doing....gulp.
There was a video a while ago that showed exactly what one could do with a machine gun and several full size silhouette targets. The machine gun emptied a 30 round magazine and winged one of the targets. A guy firing semi auto double tapped each target center of mass in the same amount of time. Of course, he also had about twenty rounds left and the other guy was empty.
LOL, I agree, never make anyone mad who shoots one shot at a time with a scope! An ordinary deer rifle is much deadlier than spray and pray.
I believe that video completely. For me, the best compromise is semi-auto with a good red-dot sight or a holosight.
Merely proof that “spray and pray” doesn’t work.
I’ve passed the DEA qualifier for MGs; with a little training, the benefit of full-auto is primarily being able to get faster double/triple-taps accurately.
Just emptying the mag doesn’t help with either full- or semi-auto.
Why do you wish to “try sniping the National Guard”?
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