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The original M16 used in Vietnam had the exact same cartridge and the exact same ammo capacity as the M14 it replaced. Colt Arms suggested that a smaller round be used, but the Army continued to use the 7.62x51mm round until late in the Vietnam Era because they wanted to retain the more powerful round. It wasn't until late in the Vietnam War era that they switched over to the 5.56x45mm. The idea of more rounds being carried is why the US continues to use the 5.56 Ball round as the standard cartridge, and that's because the Army found that more ammunition being fired was more effective than trying to hit a single target with a rifle.
The AR-15 wasn't adopted by U.S. service until about
1961, due to project agile, and it was only about 10 rifles at that point. The weapon you're thinking of was the AR-10, which was never adopted by the U.S., after the experimental aluminium barrel exploded they blamed it on the gun design and were inherently biased against it. The M14 was chosen instead, which was a derivative of the M1 garand, which had a 20 round detachable box magazine instead of an 8 round top fed one, and was a little bit lighter and shorter, for the overall barrel length. It also used the 7.62mm x 51mm NATO, instead of the .30-06, which was a little bit lighter weight, and most importantly shorter, despite possessing most of the power. A
.30-06 catridge is around 28 grams, while a
7.62mm x 51mm NATO was 25, but more importantly it's roughly half an inch shorter (3.25 inches to 2.75 inches), which makes it cycle better, so the decision was made to adopt it, using newer gunpowders for the time, which allowed less gunpowder to be used, and thus shortened the overall length of the case, which is usually around half the weight of most cartridges, and reduced the weight.
But, the M14 was found to have too much recoil; rather than look back at the AR-10, which had less recoil and was lighter weight, and was quieter due to the muzzlebreak/suppressor combo, they were convinced that the 5.56mm was the only option and that no weapon could reduce the recoil sufficiently, and stuck with it, instead. It was later revealed that fully automatic fire doesn't win battles, but precise accuracy, so even though the side that fires the most rounds tends to win, firing bullets aimlessly isn't what does it. I mean, obviously, all things equal, the guy who missed 10 times compared to the guy who missed 10 times and hit 1 time would be most likely to win, since his 11th round struck, and the other guy's didn't.
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During the Vietnam War Era, the standard issue rifle was the M16/A1. It was capable of Fully Automatic fire. From the early 80's to the late 90's, the standard issue weapon of the US Army was the M16A2, a lightweight, easier to repair version of the M16A1. It was capable of Semi-Automatic and Three-Round Burst action. The Fully Automatic capable M16A3 was developed alongside the M16A2 for use by Special Operations Forces and security forces. I have never seen an M16A3 in my life, and apparently they were primarily used by the CIA, Air Force Security Forces, and SEALs. The M16A4, the rifle I used in my Basic Training, was developed in the 90's and was used primarily by the USMC until the US Army adopted it shortly for the opening stages of OEF and then OIF. It is the exact same as the M16A2 except that it has more metal parts, making is slightly heavier, comes standard with an adjustable stock, and features a rail system. The current standard issue weapon of the US Army is the M4. The M4 was chosen to replace the M16A4 as it was found that carbines were more effective for close range engagement and were especially effective for COIN. The M4 fires in Semi-Automatic and Three-Round Burst. The M4A1, currently the primary carbine used by Special Operations Forces is the Fully Automatic version of the M4, and also features an upgrade package that can be used to change certain features of the carbine. Not since Vietnam has the standard issue rifle for the US Army been capable of Fully Automatic fire, which is odd.
That's because the U.S. military found that soldiers were more likely to waste ammunition. Trigger discipline and aim, not lots and lots of bullets, were integral to success. It's a tad sad that we've kept the 5.56mm despite figuring this out, but as of now there is an emphasis on marksmanship rather than shooting bullets randomly.
To put this into perspective, in
Vietnam, we achieved 1 enemy causality per 50,000 rounds fired. In Iraq and Afghanistan, it's been 1 enemy causality per 3000 rounds. In combat of course, not including training rounds. Since the switch, we've actually gotten far more accurate. Accuracy does not stay the same with fully automatic weapons, as like you've already said, they tend to go off target on fully automatic fire due to muzzle rise and recoil. The only reason I want one is to be able to more effectively take down a single target, since unlike in a military environment, I don't expect to need to conserve ammo, since I'm not out in the field carrying all the gear I'll have on me, including food and water, a backpack etc., and instead just need a gun in my house or in self defense somewhere publicly.
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Sorry for not being clear, the most infantry kills were made with automatic weapons. Remember that over 2/3rds of the soldiers that served in WW2 were draftees and received minimal training, which added to the ineffectiveness of the M1 rifle.
The M1 was fairly effective, but most infantry weapons in WWII were full auto. From the Thompson submachine gun, to the BAR, to the M1919 Browning, virtually all guns used by soldiers were fully automatic at the time, so that's not a surprise. But even machine guns were expected to be fired in bursts, rather than full auto. You don't just pump rounds at the enemy, you fire in controlled, accurate short bursts. And in any case, mortars, RPG's, rifle grenades, grenades, and other explosives still typically were the biggest killers on the battlefield. When you got close enough to employ them, you could take out several soldiers all in the same area, since it does actually produce a shockwave in a 3-dimensional area, and thus you could miss by 5-10 feet and still kill the person, and his whole squad, all at once, where as bullets were likely to miss a lot.
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Have you ever tried to aim a machine gun? You can get your sights on target initially, but once you pull that trigger, it is damn near impossible to keep your sight picture, even when mounted to a vehicle. Every... Seventh, I believe, round in a machine gun belt is a tracer. That is how you aim your sustained fire. You look for where the tracer is hitting, and adjust off of that. You should not be firing sustained though. You should be firing in a three to five second burst. In BCT they teach you a phrase, such as "die terrorist die", which should take you that 3-5s to say. When firing in this way, you find your target, pull the trigger, reacquire your target, do it again until it goes down.
Which only confirms the fact that the realistic way to fire a machine gun is not continuously, shooting 50 people right in a row, but in controlled, accurate bursts, suggesting you still need to aim.
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Firing more slowly does not mean you will hit more targets. Have you ever fired a rifle? Have you ever fired one at a moving target? Most people cannot hit a moving target with a rifle. The US Army's rifle qualification has a total of 40 targets. On a pop-up range, the lowest possible score while still qualifying is Marksman, the average score is Sharpshooter, and the highest score is Expert. You must hit 30-35 targets at ranges of 10-300m in order to get Sharpshooter. These are immobile, large, inanimate targets in a controlled environment where you're prepped to shoot, using optics and still most people are incapable of hitting just 40 of these. Many only score Marksman, and even some don't qualify at all. Some of these targets are 10m away. I could throw my magazine and hit them at that range. You don't even need to actually shoot the target to make it go down. If you hit the berm in front of the target, the rocks and dirt you kick up are enough to make it go down. You can miss and still score. Most trained, battle-ready soldiers cannot hit a transversing target at under 300m. It's hard. It's really hard. Now imagine trying to do that with a human being who is running, in a stressful environment, with presumably little time. That would be hard for even a military trained combat veteran.
It's really not that hard to hit a moving target with a little bit of training, but it's much easier to do with a machine gun, which is one of hte main reasons I want a fully automatic weapon. Not about killing lots of people, but killing one guy really well. If you're an assassin, or a murderer or something, you're liklely not expecting your target to fight back; if you ambush an old granny in an alley way, chances are they're not going to do too well in response. At that point, it doesn't really matter what gun you have. Where as, almost all self defense scenarios will be against someone who can't fight back, you know, presuming you were attacked
first in the first place, so we can almost always assume a dynamic situation against fighting, moving targets in self defense. So, it wouldn't really help out a murderer, where as it would help out people for self defense. It's true that a criminal could defend themselves better, but I'd rather the other side be laying down tons of covering fire, loud attention getting streams of bullets, for many minutes until the cops arrive, than to just get shot becuase I'm too slow.
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It doesn't matter if you're firing more slowly if 2/3rds of your shots are missing anyways. Take a soldier armed with an M16A3 and a soldier armed with an M16A4. They're both the same soldier, same marksmanship ability, same amount of experience, etc. Put them into a combat zone and see who hits more of their targets. Guarantee the one with the A3 will be hitting more, because he finds his target, and puts four rounds across its path. The one with the A4 will be expending just as much ammunition, but also still missing his shots. Remember how the US Army switched to the smaller 5.56mm round so they could carry more ammunition? This is why. Because the Army is expecting you to miss most of your shots. Putting more ammo down range is tried and tested true more effective than hoping you can hit a single target with a single round.
It's more like 1 in 3000, but we've seen a significant leap in accuracy since we've switched, so it's not really the case.
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I know many people can get a hold of an automatic weapon anyways. I know many criminal elements horde automatic weapons. That doesn't mean giving everyone else a machine gun will make anything any better. Look at the Cold War. The Soviet Union builds tanks, the US builds tanks. The Soviets build jets, the US builds jets. The Soviets build nukes, the US builds nukes. No, we never got into a shooting war because of the mutual fear, but did it actually make the world any safer? Do you think people back then felt safe, with the constant threat of conventional or thermonuclear war? And now the world is saturated with post-Soviet weaponry and hardware because of the mass stockpile of weapons that simply vanished once they dissolved. Think of the places those weapons went. Look at Sudan. Most of the population of Sudan has an AK. Does that look like a safe place to you? Or how about Afghanistan? That look like an ideal place to live? Everyone in Afghanistan has a gun. Everyone. If we search a house and they don't have an AK somewhere, that's suspicious. It means they're hiding it with all the other guns in the walls somewhere. Everyone there has a gun, and how safe do you think that place is?
In
Switzerland, virtually every citizen has a fully automatic military weapon (The vast majority of men between the ages of 20 and 30 are conscripted into the militia and undergo military training, including weapons training. The personal weapons of the militia are kept at home as part of the military obligations), and it has the lowest crime rate in the world. Afghanistan is dangerous because of the terrorists and Taliban forces trying to take them over, and the limited government response available since they're not a fully developed nation, and less about the guns. More deaths are due to IED's and explosives than any other thing, so guns really don't make things more dangerous. I think it's obvious that the presence of firearms is not directly responsible for the current situations in both countries.
Guns are useful because they have finesse, putting accurate fire on a single point. They don't just give you the ability to kill lots of people. If the U.S. military wants to kill lots of people, they drop bombs on them; you can destroy an entire city block in a single go with a
Mk. 84, or a 400 x 400 yard area, and kill everyone within it. It's far more destructive, and can take down entire buildings. But on say, a hostage rescue mission, if you want to save the innoccent people inside, or if the terrorists blend in with the civilian population and neccesitate more discrimination between targets, then, you use a gun. A rifle, a machine gun, a sniper rifle, a way to isolate just the bad guys and not kill the good guys. At the end of the day, a gun takes a tiny little thing and accelerates it to a high velocity, which pokes tiny holes in things at long ranges. It doesn't really do lots of damage or just magically hit people, you have to land the tiny little bullet, I.E. the 5.56mm wide window of opportunity, right on the target, and then hit a vital organ, too. It's way, way harder to do than just blowing people up, but when the objective is to save the lives of innocent people and yourself, it's worth it, so you don't hit innocent people in the background, like a bomb would, or kill yourself. Suicide bombing is incredibly effective at killing people, just 1% of attacks but the majority of the casualties, so, if your goal is just to kill people, you can be very effective with explosives, if you're willing to go to the lengths to be good at killing (or used guided missiles with computers, instead). But if you want to survive, let specific individuals (I.E. innocent civilians) survive, than a gun is desirable, as it's accurate and conveniently so, with a long range. You can engage a target while running away, keep an enemy at bay, so on and so forth. Guns make great self defense weapons, for their specific attributes that they possess, from range (can engage a target AND run away at the same time, putting distance between you and them, as well as providing covering fire which keeps an enemy at bay, even if you don't hit them), to accuracy, to convenience of clicking a trigger instead of needing a full swing. You don't have to be super strong or big, or get up close and personal with your targets. Generally, just drawing one is enough to serve as a deterrent against most attackers. Despite there being roughly as many self defense cases with firearms as violent crimes, civilians only kill about
300 times a year in self defense, compared to the some 300,000+ times (according to the
CDC) they draw a firearm. Most of the times, as a deterrent, it keeps a fight from ever happening, and that does make the world safer.
There are some 250,000 legal machine guns in the U.S., and 300 million people, and these firearms are extremely expensive, as well. You can only get these weapons pre-1986, meaning there's a limited number of them in existance, total, and when they break, they'll be all gone. I'd hardly call that available, or even legal, particularly considering they are illegal, but you can't be charged with a crime before the crime was put into place, so they still exist in small numbers.
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Machine guns are not cheap. You can go through a hundred rounds in an instant. You won't even realize it. You'll be firing away, then suddenly your bolt is locked back. Many who don't fire them regularly think there's a malfunction, because they don't realize they've expended all their ammunition. I was just in California for an NTC rotation with the 1/25 Infantry BCT, and we had a rookie gunner. We had to break his belts into 30 rounds so that he wouldn't burn through the little ammo we had. Aside from that, the weapon itself is pretty costly. The US Army gets its weapons in bulk for a contract price straight from the manufacturer. The replacement cost of an airborne 240 is about $7,000. This is how much a soldier must pay if they lose a 240 and it is not written off as a field loss. The Army itself is probably paying somewhere around $2,000 per weapon. For a civilian, I can't imagine you buying one from Fabrique Nationale for less then $20k. No matter how you look at it, it's going to empty your bank account.
Machine guns are currently expensive due to their rarity. Machine gun, as defined by U.S. law, is any weapon that can fire more than one round per trigger pull. An MP5, or an M16 qualifies as a machine gun, legally, just because it's capable of fully automatic fire. These are around the same price as their semiautomatic counterparts, and in some cases cheaper since they're the mass produced versions, designed for militaries. There are also cheaper machine guns, such as PKM's, RPK's, and so on that could all be easily bought for a practical price, but the only reason we can't know is due to their legality.
Ak-47's go for
just 35-120 dollars on the black market, and are otherwise incredibly cheap. The rounds can be 5 cents or less.
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You have the right to bear arms. I have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I feel like your right to own a machine gun threatens my right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. The courts responsibility is to interpret the US Constitution because conflicts, vagueness, and changing circumstances exist. The US Supreme Court determined that my right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness takes precedence over your right to own military grade weapons. That's just the way it is in the US. It is a government of, for, and by the people, and the people don't want just anyone to own a machine gun. If you don't like it, you can go somewhere that does allow fully automatic weapons. Like Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan. Those sound like lovely places.
Or switzerland, or lots of other places. My right to life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness shouldn't be infringed just becuase you're scared of something you don't really understand, yet it sadly still is. You won't really stop murderers from using those weapons anyways, so you're not protecting anyone by keeping them banned.
As you said yourself, criminals will get ahold of them anyways, and all it will do is leave civilians unarmed or with severely hampered means of defending themselves. They aren't super deadly, they're really not anymore useful for killing lots of people, and they've got several attributes which makes them great for self defense.
Not all "military grade" things are particularly dangerous, either. Military grade combat boots aren't super deadly, military first aid kits won't just explode at random because they're "extreme". The assumption that somehow having to do with the military makes it more dangerous just seems silly to me. Not everything in the military is designed to kill lots of people, in fact firearms in general are used when they want to avoid civilian casualties. Again, we could just bomb or nuke the place; we have enough conventional explosives to cover the world more than a single time over, and more than enough nukes. If the objective is raw death, raw body counts, than guns are a horrible weapon to choose.
There's a saying in the artillery units; Snipers get 1 shot, 1 kill (really more like .5). Artillery get 1 shot, 11 kills. You want a lot of people to disappear in an instant, want to take down a building? Blow it up. But if you want to save the innocent people inside, you need finesse, precision. Stealth, guile, astute targeting and reasoning skills, the ability to go inside and very precisely take down the bad guys. I could easily kill my target with other weapons, like a pipe bomb or molotov cocktail, but I'm asking for a weapon that's got precision, range, and many other factors which make it desirable for self defense. Explosives, RPG's, atom bombs, I get why people don't want those, you're more likely to kill yourself with such a weapon in self defense anyways (the
backblast alone of an RPG would likely kill you in a confined space, a nuclear weapon is only useful as a
deterrent), but machine gun bans seem to be predicated on a number of misconceptions. It's really a matter of challenging the paradigm that such weapons giving some major advantage to killing, or that firearms do in general.
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Fun fact, you cannot hit a target just as easily at 25m as you can at 300m. First off, a target at 300m appears much smaller, and is therefore harder to see and hit. At 300m, using the BIS on your rifle, the front sight post covers your target entirely. You can't even see what you're aiming at. Second, movement has a greater affect on bullet velocity over greater distances. If I pull the rifle 2cm to the right as I fire (because I fire right handed), at 25m it will probably hit about an inch from where I was aiming. At 300m, 2cm to the right could mean that my round hits almost two feet from where I was aiming. Third, bullets do not fly on a straight path. That is why you have to zero your rifle. Bullets initially rise, then level out, then fall. If you're planning on firing at a target 30m away, you need to zero your rifle at 30m. To zero your rifle, you find the way you shoot, you find the range you'll be engaging at, and you adjust your sights to compensate. At 30m, you will raise your sight up in order to force your aim down so that the round will still hit what you're aiming at even as the bullet rises. At 300m, you need to adjust your sights down so that you are being forced to aim higher to account for the bullet drop. It is not like Call of Duty at all. It is much, much more complex and much, much harder. Diagrams exist explaining all three of these points. I can find, or even just draw them myself for you. I can do that, because I see them all the time. I study them. I know them. Do not insult someone and then presume to know what you're talking about while spewing false information. Aside from being just rude, it shows just how ignorant you are. I can tell that you have never earnestly fired a weapon. Maybe you've gone to a range or hunted on a tour before, but I can tell from your post that you have never had to hit a target at more than 50m, or had any experience with any military grade weapons.
In conclusion, by historical evidence, military research, and marksmanship principals, you are more likely to hit a target, or multiple targets, when using an automatic weapon. This therefore means that automatic weapons are more destructive. There is no denying that. Any soldier would take a 240 over an M4 any day, and I guarantee that had any of the mass shootings we've been witnessing in the last decade had involved an automatic weapon, the situation could have been much, much worse. Just look at the North Hollywood Shootout of '97. Police responded to the bank robbery almost immediately, and they had a hard time combating these people.
Most of my information comes from experience, but the Lessons Learned information comes from this document.
www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=ADA512331
Cops had a hard time fighting guys who used
pressure cooker pipe bombs. No-one even died in the north hollywood shoot out. The cops shot the attackers
over 10 times each AND penetrated the body armor, but they were so hyped up on drugs that they still kept fighting. It's really a matter of learning to aim, at specific body parts that aren't unarmored, like a leg or head, which is a really hard target to hit, and getting more stopping power. A 9mm is barely adequate for taking down people, and it takes lots of bullets to make them useful. In fact, that's part of the reason machine guns are so great, if you do find yourself with a 9mm, you could fire off more shots into the same target and have the cumulative effect like a shotgun, without having the drawback of recoil or chance to overpenetrate. A .30-06 could easily kill the target, but then it would pierce the armor, which would make such a weapon far more powerful than a 9mm, but worse in the hands of a criminal than a sub-machine gun firing 9mm. Preference is not the same as lethality, as again, nukes would be great weapons to have against our enemies, or artillery strikes, but most soldiers wouldn't want to murder lots of people, so they prefer guns instead.
Much of your evidence is simply false, or predicated on assumptions which don't hold true or who's implications you derived could in fact mean a lot of things than what you've interpreted as. From cause and causation, to flat out attributing qualities to something that don't exist, it seems as if you don't really know what you're talking about, in many areas, and when you do, it contradicts your other statements. Being more likely to hit your target doesn't mean more destructive, it means less destructive. If you miss more often, you're more likely to hit innocent people; you wouldn't want cars with razor blades taped to the steering wheel, because it would cause more accidents. Similarly, making a weapon less accurate and less likely to hit the target for no reason will just lead to more accidents, rather than less civilian deaths and injuries, which helps no-one.
Combined with the fact that far more deadly weapons are widely available, such as explosives, and that criminals can get these weapons anyways, it's obvious that banning them will have virtually no impact on their use by criminals, and will only serve to leave people with a worse weapon for self defense. Whether it kills more people or makes it so there's more victims, you really don't stand to help anyone by keeping them banned. And the idea that they're super powerful, and particularly this is why the military uses them, is easily challenged.
