r/gunpolitics • u/clawzord25 • Jul 19 '25

Question Should the Hughes Amendment be repealed? (DISCUSSION)

As someone who enjoys the 2nd Amendment and is an advocate for it, I found myself thinking about the implications that honest-to-god machine guns would have on public safety.

I know that's quite rich and that this concern has been brought up a lot in the past to stifle the rights of gun owners. Still, I really do worry that machine guns, particularly full-power rifle cartridge machine guns like the PKM and M240, being cheaper and more available to purchase for bad actors, could cause catastrophic damage to the public and LEOs.

Semi-automatic weapons require reloading, and there's a realistic cap on their fire rate due to that necessity. Even if someone has an FRT or Bump Stock, the gun's effective rate of fire is nowhere near its theoretical cyclic rate.

In contrast, dedicated machine guns have a higher capacity for ammunition with belts, which means they can sustain their firepower for longer. Additionally, they fire much more powerful cartridges.

7.62x54R and 7.62x51 are not intermediate by any means. They are capable of penetrating body armour and can pass through multiple human bodies with ease.

Imagine a hostage situation where LEO has to storm an entrenched PKM nest or a guy setting up an M240 and hella belts of ammunition in a kill zone like the 2017 Las Vegas Shooting.

It would be disastrous.

So I want to hear what your thoughts are on allowing machine guns to be in circulation once again. Is it worth the risk we take as a people, or should some category of weapons stay off-limits to a vast majority of the general public?

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u/HelsinkiTorpedo Jul 19 '25

A lot of good points have been brought up, but I wanted to address one I haven't seen in the thread: machine guns (GPMGs and HMGs, not just the legal classification for full autos) like what you brought up are heavy and bulky. Currently, we don't see a lot of full size rifles being used criminally because run-of-the-mill criminals tend to value light and compact as qualities over firepower/terminal ballistics. Even if Hughes were repealed, I doubt you'd be seeing M249s and 240Bs being used in the commission of regular crime.

As for other full autos, shit, Hughes hasn't stopped that anyway, what with regular videos of dudes spraying bullets with full auto Glocks.

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u/clawzord25 Jul 19 '25

Yeah that makes sense. We wouldn't be seeing the real heavy hitters in the hands of just anyone.