Should the Hughes Amendment be repealed?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/SneakyAnthrax]

You do understand at present belt fed semi auto AR15s exist right? 

Semi auto m249s are close to 10k. Assuming the Hughes amendment didn't exist I imagine an automatic would cost about the same. I really don't think they would be used by the average mass killer due to cost alone.

Further: public safety is irrelevant when it effects a civil right. If you do not like this: amend the constitution. How would you feel if someone said "for public safety we should bring back indentured servitude"? Despite the 13th amendment clearly making that illegal. 

Truthfully, given the amount of glock switches being used in crime presently, I think public safety risk would be about the same with the HA gone.

Edit: idgaf about the risk to LEO. Your need to do your job safely doesn't override my rights. If you want a safe job don't be a cop. 

[u/clawzord25 → u/SneakyAnthrax]

So many assumptions that you didn't even check. Where the hell did I mention I was LEO.

[u/SneakyAnthrax → u/clawzord25]

Was more a generalization. The point was that it doesn't matter if legal MGs create challenges for the police. Nor should we accommodate them at the expense of our liberty.