Full-auto blackmarket?

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mljdeckard

mljdeckard

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When I was a kid, I was convinced by movies and TV that there is a vast underground of illegal machine guns that the bad guys maintain and sell from to anyone with a hundred bucks. You see scenes like in Lethal Weapon 3 when crooked cops are stealing truckloads of confiscated automatic weapons and when cases of them fall off the back of the truck, they lay in the street in a jumbled mess. Any criminal knows someone who knows someone who can get them any color of gun they want.

I've studied criminal justice, I've met some criminals, and I've heard a lot of them talk a big game, but I have never seen an illegal automatic weapon. If I had to find one, I would have no idea where to look. I have learned that the vast majority of shootings involving 'assault style' automatic weapons are incorrectly reported, they are semis.

There is going to be a certain amount of smuggling from places like China, but domestic laws don't affect this.

Bottom line, does this black market exist, and how extensive is it?
 
Ohhhh, they exist. Seen more than a couple. Usually, just cheap MACs and TECs, that I wouldn't trust to run without a jam on a $10 bet, much less my life.

And you're right... the vast majority of crimes are committed with semis, not FA.

Now, if I wanted a post '86, NICE full-auto MG or SMG, like an MP5, M4, or similar... I have no idea where to look for such things illegally. But then, I'm not a connected criminal. But just about anyone with a couple hundred can still pick up garbage machine pistols like the aformentioned MACs.
 
It would be easy enough to create a decent quality full auto AK47. If laws changed to allow it, I could rebuild my rifles with new receivers in about three hours each. Or, simply drill the third hole and install a full auto trigger grip if the other two holes already line up. So there could be a full auto black market.

I, rather, think that gangs and crime organizations probably modify and make their own rather than purchase on an open market. Heck, a typical chop-shop has all the tools and expertise necessary to perform the task. Why risk getting arrested for something you can already do in-house?
 
One would suspect that there is an active demand, but not among common criminals. We keep thinking about common thugs and gang bangers as the market, but I sincerely doubt it.

The demand would likely be among militants and extremists and anarchists and that ilk, who spend good money on these toys then get caught because each and every illegal machine gun on the market today probably has a dozen ATF agents looking for it personally.
 
I believe there are a lot more unresgistered fully automatic firearms than you might think; owned by someone who doesn't have the need to do the "look what I got" to every Tom, Dick, and Harry.
 
I believe there are a lot more unresgistered fully automatic firearms than you might think; owned by someone who doesn't have the need to do the "look what I got" to every Tom, Dick, and Harry.
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I hear that every house in Normandy has a BAR and a Thompson hidden in the cellar...
 
But, my regular profile of a criminal holds that they don't hold the patience or know-how to do this on any large-scale.
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In general most criminals don't, but they don't need too. All they need to do is find one or two quasi-criminal types to do the work. And from what I've read a couple of years ago, (criminal justice report), South of the border has some of the better equipped gunsmiths and shops in North America.
 
A couple years ago here SKSs were $800, AKs and ARs $1000 in full auto from one backmarket supplier, fairly easy to find. I think the producer finally ran out of luck. Plenty of them out there, most people know someone that has one, have shot one, etc.. but we are military country in NC so maybe more common. No sure whats involved in converting a SKS but however was doing it was making good money on ARs, and really good money on AKs (that would be about double a AK+parts to convert at old prices). I think that people that have most of them are mainly family types, not criminal types. We have only had one NFA item show up in the city I am in for many years, it was a short barrell shotgun and a police officer was carrying in car and shot a criminal with. In a neighboring down there was back quite a few years how there where 2 drug gangs with autos that met out in the country to settle a dispute over territory, they found 900 or so casting and there was rumored to be a single flesh hit.
 
I'd imagine the regular punk street gang types rarely see any F/A's, some, sure, but rarely. But the mafia types and large biker gangs would be another story, I'd bet. I know of a Sons Of Silence chapter in Colorado Springs that was raided and shutdown several years because they were manufacturing and distributing F/A Stens.

I'd be surprised to see an common gangbanger with more than one box of ammo.

I believe there are a lot more unresgistered fully automatic firearms than you might think; owned by someone who doesn't have the need to do the "look what I got" to every Tom, Dick, and Harry.
Click to expand...

I vividly remember, as a kid, going with my dad to some guy's house for some reason, and this guy had a German MG42 laying across the rafters in his garage. This was in the early 60's. I'll never forget standing underneath it and looking up at it, with my mouth hanging open. I didn't know what it was at the time, but I recognized it from my Sgt. Fury comic books as a WWII German MG.
 
If there are warzones, then there are full autos available. A buddy of mine told me about the weapons trade in some parts of Iraq.

MP5's for about $700.00. IIRC
 
I vividly remember, as a kid, going with my dad to some guy's house for some reason, and this guy had a German MG42 laying across the rafters in his garage. This was in the early 60's. I'll never forget standing underneath it and looking up at it, with my mouth hanging open. I didn't know what it was at the time, but I recognized it from my Sgt. Fury comic books as a WWII German MG.
Click to expand...

That would be sick, not gonna lie.
A couple of belts of ammo put along with it---just for a rainy day
 
I think there is a misconception that there are a lot out there, in my county there are a lot of NFA. Misconceptions being from people who don't know their guns, or think that any ak is FA.
 
In my opinion, the vast vast majority of "off paper" machine guns are owned quietly in safe hands. These weapons get moved to other parties that keep them knowing what the risks are. Grandpaw's BAR in the attic gets sold to billy bob his friend, and when he dies or needs to sell it gets moved to someone else close to him that will keep quiet. These weapons are plentiful in my opinion and pose almost no risk to the public. Another class of "off paper" machine guns are the ones that people just build themselves. These end up with similar fates at the appropriate time.

Ever noticed all the full auto parts and kits being sold on the internet or openly at gun shows? I think it would be a reasonable estimate to say that many more machine guns are in this country "off paper" than on. There are just too many parts and kits out there for this not to be the case. Also, early kits were demilled in a way that preserved the weapon to a great degree. For instance there is an old belt fed machine gun that would operate without the side plate, so the kit was actually a fully functional machine gun. That kind of thing is no longer the case. The BATFE is much better at making sure those kits are fully demilled.

I do not have anything like this, but I know people that do. They know the risks. I stand to inherit some NFA weapons, so I'll have my machine guns at the proper time and they will be both an source of pride and investment.
 
My rather limited exposure would incline me to think that there is a LOT less out there than you would imagine off the bat.

For most criminal actors, the primary asset of a firearm is that it be disposable. There's just too much money and risk in purchasing an FA to dump it in the street following a shooting.
 
About 2 years ago someone approached me at a local gun show looking to sell an AK47 that he "modified to run full auto" for $700.... This was my first gun show and I knew almost NOTHING about guns at that point.

I knew very little about gun laws, but this didn't sound right to me... so I simply smiled and said no thank you.

In hindsight, this guy was probably a BATFE agent and I should have called him out publicly as such. He was in his late 20'/early 30's fit military type.... but who know.
 
I was a real dummy (drugs) as a child, and knew a lot of people with illegal guns, never have I seen an illegal FA. Not one. Like someone said earlier, more organized gangs probably dabble in them, but not you're average thug.
 
Twenty years ago, in another state I livved in at the time, the father of a friend of mine died, and I helped him clear out his father's house. The deceased had been a WW2 vet and an officer. In his attic we found a large footlocker, inside of which was a lot of WW2 stuff ... a couple uniforms, canteen, belt ...a Colt 1911 semiauto .....


... and a 1928A1 Thompson wrapped up in oily paper and old sheets, tied up.

I DO NOT know what happened to it. I suggested to my friend he contact a lawyer.
 
I think the 80s popularized machineguns on TV. If you watched the A-Team, you thought every bad guy had a Tec-9 and an Uzi micro... except 95% of the guns on the A-Team were semi-auto. I think your average street thug has no use for full-auto and knows the penalty for being caught with an unregistered one. I'm willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that the people who own illegal full-autos are probably the types that know they'd be doing life in prison regardless of the weapons charge; leaders of drug cartels, white supremacist gangs, christian identity movements, or any other group associated with acts of terrorism and violence. Those are generally the types that know where and have the means to acquire illegal full-autos.
 
From what I read in the papers and hear on the news....I thought all bad guys used full autos. With whisper quite silencers. They all have hand grenades and rocket launchers as well, except for the few the sent to Mexico.

Right?
 
Here's a few toys that landed rapper T.I. in prison.

Pretty nice stuff there.

ti-guns.jpg



http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Music/10/13/rapper.arrested/index.html
 
And with the influx of Mexican drug cartels into the states, I think there is an awful lot of full-auto's out there.

For some organizations and people, money is not an obstacle.
 
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