Interesting story on machine guns

[gspn]

I thought this was a nice 'general interest' type story. From Bloomberg no less.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/feat...ch-buying-and-selling-machine-guns-in-america

 

[AlexanderA]

Interesting, and fairly well-informed, article.

I knew that Frank Goepfert had recently bought Subguns.com, but I wasn't aware of the scope of his sales activities.

What's really surprising to me is that he only got into machine guns as recently as 2005, and was able to bootstrap his operation to what it is in only 13 years. That takes a combination of luck and a lot of skill and knowledge. The machine gun world is a lot different today than when I was involved in it prior to 1986.

Ironically, this article in the Bloomberg media is going to boost Goepfert's business quite a bit, since Bloomberg readers are the kind of moneyed people that would invest in machine guns. As the article points out, some of them won't shoot their guns, or even take possession of them, being content to watch them appreciate in value while in Goepfert's custody.

 

[gspn]

I too was surprised at how recently he had started. He worked hard and had the good fortune to start the business just a few years prior to an epic boom in the firearms sales industry. I was also surprised that Bloomberg would cover such a story in a positive light. Go figure. Most stories I read on Bloomberg are blatantly anti-gun.

 

[AlexanderA]

I was also surprised that Bloomberg would cover such a story in a positive light. Go figure. Most stories I read on Bloomberg are blatantly anti-gun.

The Bloomberg media are separate from his political crusades. I don't think he's involved in the day-to-day operations of his media properties. This is in marked contrast to, for example, the Washington Post, which has been 100% antigun ever since the suicide of its former publisher, Philip Graham, with a shotgun.

 

[Flechette]

Question: How do modern full-auto machine guns show up in movies? There have been movies with machine guns made after 1986. I have even seen full auto electrically powered Gatling gun videos on YouTube.

 

[GRIZ22]

Question: How do modern full-auto machine guns show up in movies? There have been movies with machine guns made after 1986. I have even seen full auto electrically powered Gatling gun videos on YouTube.

Dealer owned LE samples. Google "Movie Gun Rentals". You can rent just about anything for a movie or TV show.

 

[Zoogster]

Hollywood works against firearm rights for the masses but exempts itself so it can put guns into a lot of movies where they are misused more than they are in real life.


However very few movies since the death of Brandon Lee in the filming of The Crow have involved real firearms or blank firing guns. I think they reserve real guns for scenes where the gun has to be apart or assembled or otherwise show detail beyond holding or firing. They especially do not like real guns loaded with ammunition.
One of the few big ones involving a lot of real firearms since then was Heat, released a year after the crow and probably mid production when Hollywood started imposing those restrictions.
A lot is invested to make a blockbuster movie and the death of a star mid production can cost tens of millions of dollars or more. Some movies can be salvaged cutting out scenes but others may need to be scrapped entirely. Many big blockbusters making a hundred million plus also cost nearly half of that to create.
So guns have been largely fake rubber or propane type since then. So even though they are exempt they are still not used a lot.

 

[Tommygunn]

Sy Fy channel used to run cheap Saturday night movies in which I swear they used airsoft guns and cgi muzzle blasts. I recall one with soldiers running around with M4 carbines with no sights. I mean NO iron sights, no optic sights, nada, ziltch, zip, nothing.
I guess the budget didn't allow for them ........

 

[Zoogster]

I was also surprised that Bloomberg would cover such a story in a positive light.

The Bloomberg media are separate from his political crusades.

I think you misunderstand the article.
The article is itself anti-gun by drawing attention to the reason such guns are rarely misused is because they are hard to obtain, and cites multiple times how some would like to make other guns as hard to get. Implying they would be misused far less if as much red tape existed for them.
They cite how buying an AR-15 is really easy.
They also cite that many machinegun owners don't even use the guns because they are so valuable and they are simply stored as collectibles by wealthier individuals.

You don't have to be clearly and blatantly anti-gun and give people the conclusion and tell them what to do if you present things in a certain manner and direct them to the conclusion. Such a strategy can actually be more persuasive because the person thinks they arrived at the logical conclusion you essentially formed for them.

Not all anti-gun pieces are aimed at the lowest common denominator.
Not all target an audience that is used to be told what and how to think, and some instead only give you the tools to arrive at an intended conclusion, but feel as if you arrived there yourself.

This includes:

'Not the readily available, semi-automatic rifles that have figured so tragically in recent mass shootings, igniting a national furor over gun laws. We’re talking about actual machine guns, which are about as far from the local gun store inventory as you can get, and much more difficult to buy.'

'Actual machine guns rarely figure in criminal acts, in part because buying one is such a burdensome, expensive and paperwork-heavy process.'

'Buying an AR-15 is as easy as visiting your local gun dealer and getting a background check. Buying a firearm from its current owner is even easier. A machine gun, however, is far from an impulse buy: '


They are directing thoughts to the fact that guns in tragedies are too easy to buy, and that heavily restricted guns do less harm. They cite how they are actually not even used much even by those that own them because they are too valuable to shoot. Being removed from the hands of the common masses and not available at a normal gun store, held primarily by wealthy investors according to the article.

The article indirectly supports the reader to arrive at removing AR-15s and similar weapons from the common masses, regulating them into only the hands of the wealthy or elite, and gives the perspective that such a situation would reduce the harm they do. That the problem with AR-15s is they are too easy to buy without much red tape and extensive time consuming processes and too cheap, and available at common gun stores. Without ever having to take on arguments or acknowledge the 2nd Amendment or the purposes of the masses having such weapons being an intentional design of the system.
It is an anti-gun piece aimed at a different crowd, and keeps the attention of more readers by not being too blatant and having a different subject matter rather than a pure focus on politics.

 

[Flechette]

Dealer owned LE samples. Google "Movie Gun Rentals". You can rent just about anything for a movie or TV show.

So if I make a small, independent "movie" company I could rent a 20mm Gatling gun?

Hmm. Maybe I should start another business...

 

[GRIZ22]

So if I make a small, independent "movie" company I could rent a 20mm Gatling gun?

Hmm. Maybe I should start another business...

Not a movie company but a gun rental business.

There's more to it. Besides functional guns you need quantities of dummy guns that look real. Dummy guns from matchlocks to AKS and ARS. Guns that fit the period of the movie. If they're shooting a Revolutionary War movie and showing British troops marching you'll need to provide maybe a 100 or more non-shooting Brown Bess replicas.

 

[Mizar]

However very few movies since the death of Brandon Lee in the filming of The Crow have involved real firearms or blank firing guns. I think they reserve real guns for scenes where the gun has to be apart or assembled or otherwise show detail beyond holding or firing. They especially do not like real guns loaded with ammunition.

Here we go again... I can assure you, from close personal experience, that real guns converted for blanks are still used and widespread. It's just cheaper that way. And I'm not talking only about some local made cheap movies. "Non guns" are used only when it's really needed - like when the location, or the scene does not permit the use of blank firing guns. Almost every major Hollywood movie with lots of firearms and shooting uses real guns. Including brand new full auto ones, owned by the armourer company and this is true for the US, UK, South Africa and etc...

That the director and/or producer may not even realize that the guns used are real ones, not some imaginary-special-order-blank-firing-only is a whole different matter. And yes, they do freak out if you tell them the truth... Like the difference between a live firing M4 carbine and a blank firing one - a simple steel shim held in place by the flash suppressor...

 

[Carl N. Brown]

^ As a side note, movies filmed in Bulgaria and other former EastBloc nations used dressed-up StG44s as stand-ins for other guns.
http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Day_of_the_Dead_(2008)#Fake_M16A2

 

[Carl N. Brown]

The "no crimes with NFA registered machine guns" sounds like the Adam Winkler talking point for applying the NFA registry (and ultimately a variation of the Hughes Amendment) to other classes of guns, especially handguns.

US Department of Justice,
National Institute of Justice,
Bureau of Justice Statistics,
Firearms Use by Offenders survey.

Survey of state and federal prison inmates who possessed or used a firearm in their last offense, 190,383 state inmates and 12,936 federal inmates considered a representaive and random selected national sample.

About a fifth of prison inmates possessed or used a firearm in their last offense.

Of state inmates who had carried a firearm during the commission of their crime, 6.8% reported having a military-style semiautomatic and 2.4% reported having a fully automatic firearm, with some carrying both.

Federal inmates who had carried a firearm during the commission of their crime, 9.3% reported having a military-style semiautomatic, or 3.8% reported having a fully automatic (machine gun), with some carrying both. (Federal inmates are more likely to have GCA or NFA sentence enhancement than state inmates.)

My Point:
While it is true that there is no use of NFA registered machine guns (fully automatic) in crime, 2.4% of state inmates and 3.8% of federal inmates carried or used a machine gun (fully automatic) in their last offense. That proves to me that restriction on the law abiding do not affect criminals, who by definition do not obey laws.
Since no NFA registered machine guns show up in crime, it does appear that there are machine guns not registered with the NFA in circulation and being used in crime. Criminal sources of machine guns include:
theft from police arsenal (John Dillinger, et al.);
theft from US Army arsenal (Ma Barker & Sons, et al.);
theft from National Guard arsenals (Bonnie & Clyde, et al.);
theft from factory, shipment, warehousing;
undeclared war trophies brought back by GIs;
smuggling (the Drew Thornton/Dixie Mafia brought in machine guns with cocaine and sold them in the back row of the Tazewell VA flea market (Drew became the model of a whole season of Justified), et al.);
underground manufacture (CSAL made machine guns for the white supremacist underground, talk show host Alan Berg was murdered by The Order using a CSAL MAC-10; just the tip of an iceberg).
[sarcasm]There's been no crimes with NFA registered machine guns so that justifies the 1986 Hughes Amendment freeze on the MG registry and extending NFA style controls to handguns, rifles and shotguns.[/sarcasm]
Excuse me while I go to the bathroom to puke.

                     Percent of prison inmates carrying
                     a firearm during current  offense
Type of firearm         State    Federal
Handgun                 83.2%    86.7%
Rifle                    7.3      8.9
Shotgun                 13.1     13.7
Single shot             53.9%    49.2%
Conventional
  semiautomatic         43.2     51.8
Military-style
  semiautomatic          6.8      9.3
Fully automatic          2.4      3.8
Note: Inmates could report carrying more than one type of firearm.

BJS def of "single shot" is a manually operated gun that fires one shot when the trigger is pulled (revolver, bolt- lever- pump-action, etc.)
Conventional semiautomatic is a sporting semi-auto gun that does not look military.