Definitive answer on the "AR w/ removed disconnector" issue

[smutna_krabice]

To all:

1)
thanks for all the explanations, especially the one with unsafely short trigger sear inducing accidental bump-firing.

2)
I know that the video was misinterpreted and explain to the EU and public that what it really shows is "that if you have an illegal full-auto parts, you can have them shoot through civilian barrel, thus proving that if you have a machinegun, you can turn it into a machinegun" (I know "machinegun" is vastly imprecise term, but the public understands it better and ever since the M27 IAR was introduced as SAW, full-auto AR lowers could be called "machineguns".)

3)
This whole thread is about preempting "curious question" from the MEPs about "okay, if this 'lower reciever thingy' can make the civilian AR-15 go full auto, how difficult would it be to convert this civilian lower reciever thingy into a machinegun lower reciever thingy?" To which I explain that auto-sear, auto-hammer, auto-trigger, auto-BCG and auto-lower would all be needed, plus timing it all together using "trial and error" to be completely reliable could take weeks.

4)
However, since the EU apparently uses Google search to "prove" that civilian semi-autos are "easily convertible to full auto", I needed to be sure in advance I can explain or disprove all the internet claims on how having an auto-FCG and auto-lower is not necessary and "converting" a civilian AR into full-auto is as simple as removing the disconnector.

5)
Bump-firing and other as such are thankfully not relevant. The EU has clear definition what semi-auto and full-auto are, back from the 1991 Directive:

(c) 'automatic firearm' means a firearm which reloads automatically each time a round is fired and can fire more than one round with one pull on the trigger;

(d) 'semi-automatic firearm' means a firearm which reloads automatically each time a round is fired and can fire only one round with one pull on the trigger;

Bump-firing as well as dangerously weak trigger pull translates as "firing one round with one pull of the trigger" - regardless of how extremely and illegaly short - and therefore semi-auto.

 

[hq]

how difficult would it be to convert this civilian lower reciever thingy into a machinegun lower reciever thingy?" To which I explain that auto-sear, auto-hammer, auto-trigger, auto-BCG and auto-lower would all be needed, plus timing it all together using "trial and error" to be completely reliable could take weeks.

Of course the semi lower will either have to be machined to accommodate the parts, or have a DIAS (drop-in auto sear) made. In order to do it properly, a bench milling machine is needed, which - along with lathe and drill press - make it equally possible to build a machine gun from scratch. Very easily, I might add; designs like Métral, Sten and many others can be built in a matter of days with little more than hand tools.

All in all full automatic and selective fire is hyped way out of proportion and AR15, of all semiautomatic rifles, isn't by far the easiest one to convert. FA fire control groups are very rare in EU and having them shipped over from the US involves a lot of red tape. Some other guns are much easier but I'm not going to name any of them, just in case some anti ends up reading this at some point, desperately looking for his or her next far-fetched excuse to justify a future ban.

 

[MachIVshooter]

You sure can. Its called a 02/07 SOT license. It will cost you about $3000 + per year with the licensing and useless state dept fees.

1) OP is in the Czech Republic, not USA

2) FFL01 with C3 SOT or FFL07 with C2 SOT is not $3k/year. $200/3 yr FFL01 or $150/3 yr FFL07 license fee with $500-$1,000 annual special occupational tax, depending on annual revenue. FFL10 is $3k/3 yr with the same C2 SOT, unless also manufacturing/dealing in explosives, which is additional licensing and fees.

FFL09 & 11 can deal NFA with C1 & C3 SOT, respectively.

 

[smutna_krabice]

Guys, thanks for all the help so far. As we did the finishing touches to the document, though, we decided we need to prepare more for any questions regarding Lightning Links and such. I know LLs are considered machineguns, but since they're apparently easy to make from scratch, we need to prepare ourselves to fend off "questions" of the "but it's super-easy to convert anything to Big Evil Murderous Machine gun with bent piece of metal and paperclips, so let's ban everything" kind.

So,

1) First, I am confused about one thing: does the Lightning Links require fully automatic bolt carrier (with the extra material on their lower back side) to function, or would they work even with "civilian-compliant" BCG? The way I understand them, they should not.

But some "darling" on YT claims that a US company called "ARFAKIT.com" has designed and is selling "80%" equivalent of LLs which work with civilian BCG via mail-order and are installed in a second, faster than DIAS. Although I'd personally wish to rather consider it just an ATF sting-op with gag orders for the unfortunate souls who fall for it and send their money and address "to conspire in making unregistered machinegun", could I really rule out the existence of civilian-BCG-compatibile-Lightning Link derivative?

2) From what I know about their design, LLs seem not to need any M16 fire control group parts at all, since they affect civilian-compliant disconnector directly. Correct? If yes, could you think of any way the disconnector or lower might be modified to still work as desired, but prevent usage of Lightning Link? I cannot, but maybe someone...

3) How much is there known about adverse effects of using Lightning Link on ARs manufactured and built as semi-auto with semi-auto components? Any serious problems with timing it together w/o automatic buffer spring and rings and BCG locking, with reliability, with Kabooms, anything at all?


Or could we only hope that noone would bring the LL question on the table, lest we'd be cornered defenseless with the "ease of converting AR to machinegun" issue?

 

[Sam1911]

1) There really isn't a strict definition of a "civilian" bolt carrier as (here at least) there are no restrictions on having whatever bolt carrier you want in your rifle. "Full auto" bolt carriers are available everywhere, and that's what many/most of us use in our builds. Some lightning links DO NOT work at all properly with a full-auto carrier and must have one of the versions of a commercial-style carrier like Clot designed for the old SP-1 rifles.
There are certain carriers which aren't supposed to work with any lightning links. I really don't know how many rifles are shipped with those other carrier designs.

2) You're asking us to design a part so that someone else couldn't UN-design it to work the way you're trying to prevent, later on. If someone can make a DIAS or LL to trip one disconnector, they can make one that will trip your new one, too. It isn't like a LL is one exact thing so complicated that the design can't be easily modified to be adapted.

3) Using the common AR-15 parts that quality rifles are built out of these days, I can't see any undue wear caused by using a properly installed DIAS or LL. The guns are made to run full-auto and as long as you aren't doing it WRONG by not timing the LL's action properly, then the gun will work just as intended. It doesn't matter much which fire-control parts are asking the firing pin to move.

Using some combinations of parts that are not designed or modified to work properly together certainly can hurt rifles and shooters, but that would be true of any gun.



In the end, I think this is a dead-ended argument. If someone wants to make a rifle full-auto, THEY CAN. It doesn't take an enormous amount of effort or skill. And trying to skirt restrictions by claiming that it's just too hard to do this is probably disingenuous, at best.

Thousands of people in society would have the ability to do this -- if they were willing to break the law and do so.

Just like so many would have the ability and skill to kill other people and commit acts of terrorism, if they are willing to break the law and our current dominant moral norms and do so.

 

[smutna_krabice]

And trying to skirt restrictions by claiming that it's just too hard to do this is probably disingenuous, at best.

I think there's a misunderstanding. What this is about is a specific paragraph in the "Expert Evaluation" of EU, on which attempt to ban all semi-autos is based.

It claims that converting an AR-15 from semi-auto to full-auto is "straightforward" and could be done "roughly in 1 minute":

Some semi-automatic firearms could be converted into automatic firearms and thus represent a real threat to security, with the proccess of conversion being straightforward in some cases ... The same happens for certain semi-automatic rifles, with online demonstration to convert from semi-automatic to automatic in roughly one minute - see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQMruhGF4Fs

So we are out to disprove this and explain:
1) that since you would need "automatic"
- trigger (w/o rear wall) AND
- hammer (w/ provision for auto-sear) AND
- disconnector (w/ longer "leg") AND
- fire selector AND
- lower reciever (w/o the "90deg fire selector bump" and possibly auto-sear pin hole) AND
- BCG
The proccess of it's conversion is NOT "straightforward" by any means.
2) since you would need to un-pin and exchange the whole Fire Control Group, drill a auto-sear hole or, for DIAS, at least mill-off/file-off the "90deg limiter", it sure as heck doesn't take "roughly minute" or even minutes.
3) since you would need to "time it together", timing weapon to run reliably in full-auto without access to already tuned springs and buffers and without the ability to compute it theoretically takes days to even weeks (based on anecdotal experience: I once listened to a license holder who was building a MAC-10 as a pet-project and it took him year to time it together in his free time. Since the bad guys also cannot shuttle between timing-trying-timing-trying, as full-auto rifle fire creates a lot of attention they cannot afford... I consider "days to weeks" in this case to be fairly optimistic.

And therefore, since the "conversion" isn't "straightforward" nor "within minute", requires acquiring of specific ACFG parts and their installation and timing, it would be faster and easier for common criminal/terrorist to buy the whole automatic rifle on the black market instead of passing CCW exams, buying a registered AR-15, getting M16 ACFG, getting auto-sear and timing it together.

I honestly don't think that is dishonest, since no terrorist attack in EU (at least of which I know of) happened with civilian AR surreptitiously converted to full-auto, the aforequoted paragraph is just pure fearmongering and we need to take it down.

So, thanks for you reply, I appreciate it nevertheless. At lest now I know that even with the Lightning Link, the weapon needs to be timed together: I was living under the impression that since LL applies to regular disconnector, it is somewhat "slower" in releasing the hammer, thus gives the BCG "extra time" to stabilize itself in-battery and thus doesn't need to be timed. But since you say it needs to, we have at least something to disprove the "one-minute-conversion" claim.

 

[Sam1911]

Ok, that does make some more sense to me. No, it isn't "under a minute" unless you have the parts on hand to drop in and the gun is ready to accept them.

 

[MachIVshooter]

It claims that converting an AR-15 from semi-auto to full-auto is "straightforward" and could be done "roughly in 1 minute":

Quote:
Originally Posted by EU Evaluation of the Firearms Directive
Some semi-automatic firearms could be converted into automatic firearms and thus represent a real threat to security, with the proccess of conversion being straightforward in some cases ... The same happens for certain semi-automatic rifles, with online demonstration to convert from semi-automatic to automatic in roughly one minute - see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQMruhGF4Fs
So we are out to disprove this and explain:
1) that since you would need "automatic"
- trigger (w/o rear wall) AND
- hammer (w/ provision for auto-sear) AND
- disconnector (w/ longer "leg") AND
- fire selector AND
- lower reciever (w/o the "90deg fire selector bump" and possibly auto-sear pin hole) AND
- BCG
The proccess of it's conversion is NOT "straightforward" by any means.
2) since you would need to un-pin and exchange the whole Fire Control Group, drill a auto-sear hole or, for DIAS, at least mill-off/file-off the "90deg limiter", it sure as heck doesn't take "roughly minute" or even minutes.

Nope, definitely not a one minute process. I have a vertical mill, and I'm extremely familiar with the AR. Even if I had the FA fire control parts and the inclination to make an M16, it'd probably take me every bit of 20 minutes to strip the receiver, indicate it in the vise, machine it, flip it 90°, re-indicate, drill the AS hole and reassemble into an M-16. For some average Joe with a Dremel and a cordless drill? I'd think at least an hour, and good chance it wouldn't come out right.

In point of fact, I was present for and advising on the machining of an AR-15 receiver into an M-16 receiver by my friend, who is an FFL07 02 SOT, and who was just learning to run his small mill. With my instruction, it took him the better part of an hour.

 

[barnbwt]

Now, if the argument has gotten to the point of "if any weapon can be used to make an auto, it is too dangerous to be tolerated," I'm afraid any semi-auto is probably an endangered species. But if you're already at that point, they're essentially already lost.

From a practical sense, though, no. A semi-auto closed-bolt gun cannot be easily made into a full auto (let alone a safe or controllable one). Open-bolts can be; this is a fact, which is not changed by the wrong-ness of forbidding them or proper fully automatic arms. As an AR is a closed-bolt weapon, it cannot be easily made into a functional automatic (a jam-happy wreck that doubles or occasionally explodes, maybe)

TCB

 

[Aikibiker]

It sounds like it would be easier to manufacture/machine an open bolt full auto along the lines of the STEN gun from scratch then to convert a closed bolt semi auto into a correctly functioning full auto firearm that is not dangerous to the user.

 

[smutna_krabice]

Now, if the argument has gotten to the point of "if any weapon can be used to make an auto, it is too dangerous to be tolerated," I'm afraid any semi-auto is probably an endangered species. But if you're already at that point, they're essentially already lost.TCB

Fortunately, it's not "if it can", but "if it easily and quickly can".

That's why I hate these stupid Lightning Links.

Although the British claimed they want to impose their insane gun-ban on the whole EU, as per David Cameron and Theresa May

It sounds like it would be easier to manufacture/machine an open bolt full auto along the lines of the STEN gun from scratch then to convert a closed bolt semi auto into a correctly functioning full auto firearm that is not dangerous to the user.

...and that is exactly the point we are striving to push.
Alonside with the fact that all the terrorists had bought factory-made full-auto AKs on the Belgian (=gun ban state) black market, to where they were smuggled from elsewhere (Balkans, Slovakia*...)

_______________
*up until recently, Slovakia had extremely soft "deactivation" laws: select-fire assault rifle with iron pin driven through the original barrel was considered "Theatrical blank-firing" and sold to anyone without license. Naturally, black market misused this, bought factory-made select fire rifles, had them turned into "Theatrical" in Slovakia, then re-bored the barrel and off you go. This way, brand-new "Theatrical-deactivated" CSA Sa.58 "mini" got into hands of one of the Charlie Hebdo perpetrators, although in the actual attacks, he used AK smuggled from the Balkans (islamic organized crime hold major part in the smuggling of drugs to EU through the Balkan route, so as usual, alongside with drugs come the AKs).

This Slovak loophole is no longer in effect, but the European Commision is claiming that this whole law is only about "Common standards on deactivation" - while the opposite is true, as shown here.

 

[AlexanderA]

Rightly or wrongly, the "removed disconnector" was an issue for the AR-15 back around 1970. Because of allegations -- proven or unproven -- that simply removing the disconnector would make the gun go full automatic due to hammer follow-down, Colt removed the AR entirely from the market until a redesign could be done. The solution that Colt came up with was to have a notched hammer and a beveled ("unshrouded") bolt carrier, so that, with a missing disconnector, the lip on the hammer notch would catch the flange on the firing pin, jamming the gun hopelessly.

With these modifications, the gun was reintroduced after a few months' hiatus. (Interestingly, these modifications were dropped after a few years, when it was realized that the original problem was overstated and that the modifications made the gun less reliable.) But, the period during which the AR-15 was off the market gave an opportunity to Armalite to make some headway with its rival AR-180. IMO, without the temporary absence of the AR-15, the AR-180 would not have had the (modest) success that it did.

 

[barnbwt]

"Fortunately, it's not "if it can", but "if it easily and quickly can".

That's why I hate these stupid Lightning Links."
LL's are easy nor quick, though. They are a completely separate part which must be sourced or fabricated, neither of which is quick nor easy (in the sense of a rapid conversion)

Now, looping a shoelace around the trigger of an AK and back around to the bolt carrier so the gun is fired upon its return as the shooter tensions the shoelace --that's a rapid and easy conversion. It's also unavoidable on literally all guns with reciprocating charging handles (or guns which have an accessible bolt carrier)

As I said, it all comes down to where the arbitrary line is drawn if we choose to ban these types of machines; what the pols and anti's think they can get away with before they lose their jobs. If the wrong people are in charge, you get shoelaces banned, and if the right people are in charge, only weapons configured with actual automatic fire (rather than once-removed 'intent' or twice-removed 'ease of conversion') result in prosecutions. So long as the power to ban is intact, you as a member of the gun owners have little say where the line falls.

TCB

 

[Swampman]

The Charlton Automatic Rifle was a WWII Kiwi conversion of the SMLE or Lee Metford that turned a bolt action into a full auto. It isn't the sort of thing that anyone could do in his garage in an hour or two, but I'm pretty sure a decent machinist could pull it off without too much trouble.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlton_Automatic_Rifle

A scratch built copy of the 9mm Sten SMG would be even easier to make and would probably be more effective for hosing down crowds of people.

I have no knowledge of the support base ISIS has in Europe, but I'd be surprised if they don't have a few sympathizers with machinist's skills good enough to manufacture Sten or even AK copies.

The point is that we argue that removing the disconnector would result in "such unreliable rifle criminals wouldn't dare to use it" - because, for example, their intended victims would use the jam to take down the criminals.

I don't know about the rest of the EU, but I think violently assaulting a criminal would probably be illegal in the UK these days.

 

[smutna_krabice]

My friend has been looking at the Lightning Link videos on YT and thinks that the LL needs some M16 ("automatic") fire control groups to work.

I am afraid it doesn't, that the LL works with "stock semi AR-15" ones, am I right?

 

[pintler]

I'm pretty sure the ATF doesn't consider AR-15's to be 'readily convertible' to full auto fire ... because if they did, AR-15's wouldn't be legal.

 

[jmorris]

With an SP1 style carrier and a receiver that will accept it, the Lightning link would be the quickest "no modification" way to make a reliable FA AR 15.

This is how they work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDWVYYJN_2Q

 

[Sam1911]

I am afraid it doesn't, that the LL works with "stock semi AR-15" ones, am I right?

As I said before, the Lightning Link works with one of the types of "civilian style" carriers.

Here's a great page on how lightning links work:
http://www.quarterbore.com/nfa/lightninglink.html

Drop In Auto Sears (DIAS) work with the full-auto style carrier. Here's a page on how they work:
http://www.quarterbore.com/nfa/dias.html

Those two pages should give you all the info you'll ever likely need on either of the "drop-in" options for full-auto conversion of an AR-15.

 

[Aikibiker]

According to the info on lightning links that Sam1911 posted they require a very specific type of bolt carrier to function (an original Colt SP 1 type) that has not been made for 30 years. A regular carrier can be modified to work, when the modification was discussed, the word "milling" was mentioned. Milling generally refers to skilled machinists and special tools. The kind of tools that could build a machine gun from a block of metal instead of modifiying an existing firearm.

http://www.quarterbore.com/nfa/lightninglink.html