Should the Hughes Amendment be repealed? (DISCUSSION)

[u/clawzord25]

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?

[u/CAD007]

Every argument you just made for the lethality of machine guns, also applies to the majority of guns that have been in general circulation for the last 100 years.

Additionally, the rate of fire of a machine gun would result in a terrorist exhausting the ammo supply that they are able to carry in a much shorter period of time, and also yield a lower hit ratio and accuracy. There are also many full auto simulator devices out there now that have not been especially effective in criminal use because of these reasons.

Your worst case scenario would be something a kin to the North Hollywood Bank Robbery, but since then even the most rural police departments have upgraded their firearms, and have access to militarized resources and technology which have changed the dynamics of engagement with criminals in the favor of law enforcement. 

Not to say that bad things can’t happen. Freedom doesn’t necessarily equate to safety, and the fact that it doesn’t is what makes the 2A effective.