So how much would it cost...

[jobu07]

A recent thread about hell freezing over and the SCOTUS striking down all of our gun laws got me to thinking, along with the rest of you too by the results. Anyway, a number of people decided they'd go on a spending spree now that all sorts of full-auto-y goodness would now be available to us mere peons. Anyway, to my point...

So if new manufacture machine guns will become available and legal to all of us, what sort of a price tag might we see on them? Obviously the current price tag for transferrable guns will go down and the new production stuff, where would it be at? $500 for an M16? Couple-o grand for an M249? Any ideas where we'd see price levels?

 

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, purely from a manufacturing costs standpoint, machineguns aren't significantly more expensive to make than semi-autos. And the ones in current production for the military already have economies of scale well established. So if that were all there were to it, I'd expect very little price difference between machineguns, and the semi-auto versions of the same.

But I'd suspect that even with their legality nailed down beyond doubt, the biggest part of the expense would be legal issues. They're having to spend money defending against frivolous lawsuits already, that would only get more expensive with the full auto issue involved.

 

[Eightball]

I think that companies would milk full-autos for all they are worth. They would know that if they became legal, then people would buy them, regardless of the cost. They'd keep prices artificially inflated until sales dwindled---then they'd drop a slight bit to get more buyers, etc. I think the price difference would still be massive, because people will always like more money. Just my opinion, I hope it would be wrong if that situation did arise.

 

[Brett Bellmore]

The problem with that reasoning is that there are machinegun designs that are in the public domain, and companies all over the place capable of manufacturing them, or the key parts to convert semi-auto rifles to full auto. There'd be too much competition to maintain that kind of monopolistic pricing for long.

 

[RyanM]

I think that companies would milk full-autos for all they are worth. They would know that if they became legal, then people would buy them, regardless of the cost. They'd keep prices artificially inflated until sales dwindled---then they'd drop a slight bit to get more buyers, etc. I think the price difference would still be massive, because people will always like more money. Just my opinion, I hope it would be wrong if that situation did arise.

That could only happen if the manufacturers were the only source of new machine guns. If all NFA laws were really eliminated, anyone with access to a machine shop could whip up a Sten gun or Mac 10 for $100 or less. There'd also be "conversion kits" popping up all over the place for existing semi-auto guns where modifying them is simple enough, and I'm sure plenty of machine shops would be doing conversions on the trickier ones, too.

There'd be enough competition to keep prices low.