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Question Should the Hughes Amendment be repealed?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/DugnutttBobson Jul 23 '25
How were things in 1985? Things were okay? 1965? 1950? Machine guns were easier to get in any of those years than now. Was there a large decline in murders following 1986? Fewer machine gun killings?
I think what we'd find is that before 1986 things were fine and things after 1986 weren't better. The Hughes amendment didn't make anyone safer and only exists to chip away at the second amendment. Criminals who want illegal machine guns will still make them or buy them and law abiding people have fewer gun rights. These days it sure does seem like a lot of Glocks in the hood have temu switches on them. So it's useless against even the dumbest of criminals but makes it so I can't get a full auto MP5. Great work, DC.