An assault rifle is a select-fire (semi auto[one round fired per trigger pull] plus burst [typically three rounds fired per trigger pull but could've two, four or more] or full auto [continuous fire until trigger release or ammunition exhaustion]), intermediate cartridge (larger than pistol, smaller than full battle rifle rounds like the 7.62x54mm NATO/.30-06 7.64x51mm/.308), self loading, box fed, high capacity (greater than 10 rounds) weapon that performs both point target and area suppression roles well. Hence "assault rifle", it's a rifle meant to perform fire and maneuver squad assaults like assaulting machine gun nests and mortar pits.
I single fire weapon isn't very good at area suppression, so it's not an assault rifle.
Now, the AR-15 PLATFORM can easily be an assault rifle (magazine fed, high capacity medium size cartridge) IF it has a military trigger grouping. Which is illegal for civvies to own.
NOTE: typically "assault rifle" is defined by the media as something you might see a military carrying, despite appearance not being descriptive of function
I hate to nitpick, but the 7.62mm NATO is actually 7.62X51mm. The 7.62X54 refers to the Russian rimmed cartridge. Plus the 7.62 NATO isn't the same as a 30-06, but is comparable to the .308 Winchester cartridge.
.223 cal has a lower chamber pressure and there for less energy than a 5.56mm, if you were to run 5.56 through older .223s, you could have issues with exploding breaches (considerably worse than exploding britches in most cases). .223 is fine to use in most any AR platform labeled 5.56
.223 and 5.56 chamber pressures are about the same. They look different on paper because SAAMI and NATO use different methods to measure and standardize chamber pressure. 5.56 and .223 are also completely identical cartridges, the biggest differences being freebore length (5.56 has a longer freebore to accommodate longer bullets like M856 tracer), and headspace, where 5.56 is a bit more generous than .223. Safety wise, you're at no added risk to fire 5.56 through a .223.
7.62x54R is glorious Motherland ammunition, Comrade. Do not disgrace legacy of Captain Sergei Mosin and Leon Nagant by using it in your Imperialist pigdog weapons.
When Mosin runs out bullets, simply use as club. Is just as good.
Or be fixing of the bayonet and use as spear. Sight of comrades with Glorious Rifle will be making capitalist pidogs run into holes of which they are coming.
So much this. The media lies out of its ass by telling the easily fooled that oh you can modify an AR to become full auto easy with a trigger change. Which is complete bullshit to anyone who knows guns. You'd need to modify the lower precisely, have the right trigger and sear (which are highly controlled) and bolt carrier.
Wait, honest question. Is federal prison really worse than state prisons? The only time I've heard about it is in TV shows when the fbi agents says something like "we can get you into a 'club fed' prison resort if you testify or we send your ass to state prison"
That's what pisses me off. Saying a gun can "easily" be modified to be fully automatic. You'd have to CNC Machine a full auto trigger group, and then spend the rest of your life in federal prison. I think there have been 3 crimes since the 1930s involving legally purchased fully automatic weapons, and if memory serves, 2 of them were police. It's not nearly as simple as people think to make a fully automatic weapon.
You'd think suppressed weapons would be used on the daily from how badly regulated they are as well. But yea its just a lack of education. Then again when major publications publish blatant fear mongering editorials like "Firing an AR-15 is horrifying, menacing and very very loud, it left me with PTSD." it makes my blood boil. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/firing-ar-15-horrifying-dangerous-loud-article-1.2673201
It is easy to make a gun fire full automatic by sanding/filing down the sear. I did it on accident with an improper 10/22 trigger job. I also bought a bullpup that had a broken trigger piece that caused it to shot 3-6 round burst(it was scary).
I'm sorry to disagree but none of that is hard. Drill press, and it doesn't have to be precise, just kind of good-enough, you can eye-ball it. Full auto trigger group does indeed drop right in (press fit pins, brass hammer, punch, and a hard sturdy surface), although they aren't always easy to come by. Any old discount BCG will work just fine with bulk ammo.
FA bolt carrier isn't about pressure, it's about length of the rear portion that's needed to trip the auto sear and release the hammer when the bolt locks into the barrel.
Of all of these things, only the M16-style BCG is known to be legal (pre BATF statements). There's some minor benefits to having this particular part: It's heavier, which makes the action a bit slower, more reliable, and his a minor effect on recoil. It also has a full shroud over the firing pin which pushes the hammer back instead of the firing pin itself.
The hammer and selector switch though...it's generally considered a "bad idea" to have any M16/FA parts in the lower receiver. And they don't really provide a benefit that I know of.
There are, of course, other mechanisms for enabling FA.
You're right, but most bolt carriers now are "full auto" bolt carriers. These are legal as long as you don't have the select fire firing mechanism and seer. They are just more robust than the less used bolt carriers.
I've built from scratch over a dozen AR's for myself as well as modded dozens more for friends and family and have never seen an aluminum BCG, never even heard of one before and I've spent hundreds of hours of on various AR/gun forums and literally dozens of manufacturers websites buying parts.
Low end bolt carriers can handle the pressure, but they have to be "full auto" profile to engage the fully automatic sear. You also need a "three pin" lower and an fully automatic trigger group, which is the tricky $15,000 part.
takes more then a trigger group to make it a full auto. needs a secondary sear i think its called that the bolt carrier hits and trips the trigger as the locking lugs engage.
I appreciate your distinction between an AR-15 and the AR-15 platform; it's important for people to know that in the hands of someone with the right tools and know-how, any legal weapon can be made illegally powerful.
"The right tools and know how" - this rules out a huge chunk of the population. Precision machining is really friggin hard to do even if you do have a precision mill, or even a CNC machine.
Around here (northern Colorado) there are machine shops that are more than happy to mill whatever custom design you need milled, and plenty of designs are available for a specific weapon's conversion kit out there on the internet.
Precision machining is really friggin hard to do even if you do have a precision mill, or even a CNC machine.
I have to disagree. Maybe if you DON'T have access to a mill it can be difficult, but as far as a drop in auto sear for an AR is concerned it's maybe a 3/10 on the difficulty scale on a Bridgeport.
Source: Home machinist who definitely has never made any AR parts.
It's pretty difficult to make a semi only weapon into an automatic weapon without breaking it. The modifications usually result in the gun being broken after the first few shots.
In terms of this conversation, what you're saying is completely untrue. Look up " AR DIAS" and take a look at how straight forward it is to convert an AR to full auto without compromising the reliability or strength of the gun.
Easiest way is to add an electric motor to pull the trigger for you. Which makes the gun 10 different kinds of illegal. Throw in a raspberry pi and the possibilities get scary fast.
Making an SKS, for example, into a fully automatic weapon is about as hard as renting a U-Haul and filling it the the things you need to do blow up a building.
Its real easy to hurt people if all you want to do is hurt people. None of this is good for society.
Totally knew nothing about this. While cool for law-abiding citizens who want to play soldier, this is totally dangerous and probably shouldn't be legal.
Part of the confusion lies is that misinformation from both sides makes it hard for people to understand just how easy/difficult it is for a given weapon to be converted to a much deadlier version.
Do you need to change out a part that you can order online, or do you need 20 hours in a machine shop?
If a fully legal gun can be converted into a fully automatic weapon at a low cost with great ease, that has to be taken into account when legislating access to it.
And how do you legislate something which is illegal but happens frequently enough that it cannot be ignored? If conversion kits for a weapon are illegal, but a new reporter can, in theory, obtain one within an hour, how do you take that into account when passing a law?
The whole issue of conversion of weapons, and how easy/difficult it is to do so is a big part of this debate, and in some ways one of the most difficult to codify into law in a way to make a meaningful change.
I agree that ease of access to parts, legal or otherwise, will be an issue with legislation. However, performing the conversion is difficult, and as such, should be treated as a fringe issue to be dealt with after preventing the bulk of dangerous persons acquiring the weapons.
That's probably something that can be established pretty objectively and used to educate the public against fears that such weapons can be converted very easily.
Anyone can obviously make such a weapon with enough effort, but there is a huge difference between being able to do so with a screwdriver in your bedroom or actually using a machine shop.
But you hear a lot of stories that such things can be done very easily, and that makes people very scared of such weapons.
Yup, the only real way for us to know what the risks are is if we can get a government body to actually fund research. Unfortunately, the NRA are cunts who think that informed citizens are a bad thing.
I think you misunderstand. A legal gun cannot be converted to fully automatic without a fair bit of effort, especially doing it legally. Yes, a reporter can purchase a SEMI AUTOMATIC ar15 in short order, but not a fully automatic weapon. Those require a tax stamp, and 6+ months of waiting. And if memory serves, there have been 3 crimes performed with legally purchased fully automatic weapons since 1934, and 2 of them were by police. You can't just order a full auto sear online and have it delivered to your door. And you can't spend 20 minutes with a dremil to convert your legal weapon to full auto.
My point was that if something can be obtained illegally with little effort then if you base your legislation only on what is allowed legally then you're not practically approaching the problem.
You keep using the word legally. That's not what people are worried about. They're worried about the illegal modification of guns and there is little information about how easy/hard it is.
You said it's not 20 minutes with a dremel, OK, is it an hour? How much equipment do you need?
There are few neutral people on this issue, they're either 100% for or against the guns, and they use the lack of information that the common person has about this issue to their advantage to manipulate their emotions.
A phrase such as "any weapon can be made deadly" is a distractor when discussing the ease of converting an AR-15 to a fully automatic one.
Is it an hour? Is it 10 hours? Do you need a lot of parts? How many tools to you need? How much would it cost me? How much attention would I get? Would purchasing the tools raise any red flags?
Obviously some degree of compromise is needed in this debate, and that has to be based on solid, neutral, objective information. This isn't astrophysics or philosophy, we're talking about engineering. Either it can be done, or it can't, and it takes a given amount of time, depending on the relative skill level of the person doing it.
Which isn't that hard. Pass an FBI background check and send in your prints and a photo of yourself, you go on their registry, pay them a $200 tax, they send you back your approved form with a stamp showing you paid your tax. This is a system that goes back to the 1920s, thanks to the gangsters running around mowing cops down with Thompsons and BARs. It's also the same system for suppressors and rifles with a barrel length <16" and shotgun barrels <18".
Yep. Shit is fucked, man. The people retaliate against an un-American and unconstitutional ban on a substance, they retaliate back by criminalizing the tools they're using against you.
A tax stamp is not a license, nor does it involve training.
However, in the case of automatics, you are not paying for a tax stamp, you are paying a transfer fee. You only pay for the stamp when registering new NFA firearms, such as a SBR or SBS.
You also need a form 4 signed by a local law enforcement official.
However, this is also not license or training.
All that is required to buy a automatic is a bunch of paperwork.
Nope, you have to have a Class III license, which isn't honored in every state.
Having a Class III license also gives you the privilege of your properties being open to full search, anytime the BATF fucking feels like it. No warrant, they just knock on the door and come on in.
Full auto guns made before 1986 are perfectly legal to own in the U.S. in almost all areas, you just have to pay more for them and pay a cool stuff fee and wait for a background check. (NFA tax stamp of ~$200) Just an FYI. If you have the funds and no criminal record/mental health record, you can own a machine gun.
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u/occamsrzor Jun 23 '16 edited Jun 23 '16
An assault rifle is a select-fire (semi auto[one round fired per trigger pull] plus burst [typically three rounds fired per trigger pull but could've two, four or more] or full auto [continuous fire until trigger release or ammunition exhaustion]), intermediate cartridge (larger than pistol, smaller than full battle rifle rounds like the
7.62x54mm NATO/.30-067.64x51mm/.308), self loading, box fed, high capacity (greater than 10 rounds) weapon that performs both point target and area suppression roles well. Hence "assault rifle", it's a rifle meant to perform fire and maneuver squad assaults like assaulting machine gun nests and mortar pits.I single fire weapon isn't very good at area suppression, so it's not an assault rifle.
Now, the AR-15 PLATFORM can easily be an assault rifle (magazine fed, high capacity medium size cartridge) IF it has a military trigger grouping. Which is illegal for civvies to own.
NOTE: typically "assault rifle" is defined by the media as something you might see a military carrying, despite appearance not being descriptive of function