And expensive. $45,000+ last time I checked and more paperwork than you'd need for a mortgage.

Lowers. The modification you need is in the lower and the trigger group. Nothing changes in the upper.

What type of ammo do you need to run full auto? My understanding is most guns will jam with off the shelf ammo.

Some are: the M4A1 and the M16A3 are capable of full auto. That mode is useful when trying to suppress an enemy position. Also, could not disagree more that a bolt action rifle could have caused near as much carnage...not even remotely possible. Their rate of fire and small number of rounds that they carry (usually 3-4) would give folks a lot more time to escape. And, assault rifles are plenty accurate and powerful enough out to 400-500 meters.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

400-500m is reaching the max effective range of an assault rifle, although you might get more if you put it on a bi-pod. At this point, I wouldn't rule out a machine gun like an M240 which has a much further effective range. The army types on the forum could comment on whether the audio sounds right, but acoustics on cell-phone video in a concert venue with gunfire coming from a hotel 450m away are difficult to pin down, I think.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

yeah, it is close: max effective range for an M16 is 550 meters for a point target, 800 meters for an area target. If he was shooting something bigger than 5.56mm, those ranges would probably go up a bit. the audio did sound an awful lot like a machine gun to me, although it's been since the mid '90s that I was close to one being fired.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

Agreed. I would have no problem outright banning full auto weapons, period. And very stiff sentences for anyone caught modifying a weapon to full auto.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

Reports are it was a fully automatic rifle and that is likely the case (I have no reason to doubt those reports at this point). However, I would point out that a bump fire stock would produce that exact same sound. So, it is possible he was using a semi-auto with a bump fire stock.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

Under existing laws that will earn you up to 10 years in Federal prison and/or a $250k fine.

Most off the shelf ammo will work just fine. Typically, you want to run 5.56 as opposed to .223. You can buy bulk military 5.56 very easily.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

Unfortunately not much of a deterrent for someone already planning on mass murder and suicide.

Agreed. We always had 2 (M240s) mounted on the tanks but once the ground kit came out we had folks on the ground armed with those as well (if memory serves the intent was to phase out the M60). Having said all that, and this is not to minimize the carnage and tragedy, but if he was using an M60 or 240 I would expect the casualties to be much higher. Based on nothing more than my personal experience firing them, just how packed that crowd was, and the rounds being 7.62.

Are people commonly caught? It's not going to be self-reported. There is no compulsory inspection of weapons (except maybe when formally registering a full auto weapon?) And I've spent a lot of time in Nevada. Full auto fire heard out in commonly used shooting areas (whether actual ranges or just open space in the desert) just isn't going to turn a lot of heads. Gun owners aren't going to snitch on each other. I speculate that even a lot of law enforcement types, upon hearing full auto, would not ask to see the proper registration papers, as long as the gun was being fired in a somewhat responsible manner.

I'd think that the laws against modifying a weapon to full auto are one of those laws where you tack it on to other crimes once you've been charged with some other crime. E.g. if you do an armed robbery, and turns out you modified your weapon, then the DA gets to tack on 10 more years, etc.

That was full auto, 100%, sounded a whole lot like a saw to be honest. Certain sounds are hard to forget.

Fully automatic rifles and handguns have been illegal in the United States for decades. You have to go through an inordinate amount of investigation and paperwork to get a federal firearms license to possess such weapons, though there are some folks who have been grandfathered into the system prior to its implementation.

This shooter in Las Vegas is old enough to have benefited from that, of course, but reports are sketchy as to whether he had an ability to acquire fully automatic weapons on his own. There is of course a black market for such weapons, and perhaps he availed himself of that route?

Also, it is possible to modify semi automatic rifles so that they can fire fully automatic, but it's neither as easy as television makes it nor can you just go out and do it without attracting no small amount of attention.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

That was actually my first thought as well, but I dismissed it due to the difficulty of the shooter getting his hands on a saw.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

Stop speculating. It's clear that you don't know what you're talking about.

been a long time since I've heard M16s on full auto and M60s and M240s, but the audio from the attack did sound more to me like a machine gun than an assault rife on full auto. how the hell he would have gotten his hands on any full auto weapon will be interesting to find out.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

I was asking questions. That's what this thread is for. Calm yourself a bit, and then inform me. Are you familiar with Nevada "full auto culture?" Or just ignore me.

If you're thinking I'm anti-gun, you're wrong. Had an AR-15 at one point.

 
Reports are he had at least 10 different guns in the room so it is possible one of them was full auto, however, the videos on twitter I have seen were not a full auto gun.

There is a video someone took where the camera is directly at the base of the hotel, you can see the muzzle flashes. The rate of fire goes up and down which would indicate either a bump stock or a crank trigger mechanism. It really sounds like a crank mechanism of some sort because it speeds up and slows down like a crank would.

Rate of fire wasn't fast enough in any of the videos I saw for it to be a full auto gun, all sounded like modified semi-auto.

Pretty easy hurdles to jump through.
1) Sell your Honda accord
2) fingerprint check (he had no criminal record)
3) Background check - as long as he has no history

400-500m is reaching the max effective range of an assault rifle, although you might get more if you put it on a bi-pod. At this point, I wouldn't rule out a machine gun like an M240 which has a much further effective range. The army types on the forum could comment on whether the audio sounds right, but acoustics on cell-phone video in a concert venue with gunfire coming from a hotel 450m away are difficult to pin down, I think.

Given the height and distance of the shooter, would 400-500m be in his range?

It's rare. Spend any time around "gun enthusiasts" if that's how you want to term them and you'd quickly realize nobody would ever fathom the conversion. There's no practical application and the vast majority of those people are worried about going to jail because their barrel is 1/4" too short or runs afoul of some other obscure regulation.

So after finding videos of a crank trigger mechanism and a bump stock, pretty much any prohibition on automatic weapons is pointless.

As an IP attorney I am always amazed at the things people come up with. Solving problems I never knew existed. Here are two more.

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

Yep, I had heard of the bump fire stock before, but not the crank trigger until this morning. After watching some vids on it, the vids from Vegas definitely sound like a crank trigger. The rate of fire is not consistent or fast enough to be a full auto weapon.