this post was submitted on 05 May 2025
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Agree. Shame there is only like 12 civilian transferrable examples that rarely come up for auction and the last one sold for $600k a few years back.
Opening the registry might bring them down to the "Mini gun or V10 Lambo" range.
Please explain why there are "only' 12 "civilian transferable" to a non-us.... Because here I stood thinking the ar15 already was the epitome of civilian wtf.
Prior to 1986, any US citizen could buy pretty much any machine gun they wanted so long as it was registered and the tax on the transfer was paid.
After 1986, you could not buy a new machine gun but could buy a "transferrable"(registered prior to 1986) machine gun as long as the tax was paid and you pass a background check.
This lead to a ton of registrations of various means to covert a semi auto gun into a full auto gun, some as simple as two pieces of metal sheet.
Post '86 machines guns are not transferrable between civilians unless the civilians have a special type of license that qualifies them as a manufacturer or demonstrator of certain weapons.
The demonstration class requires you to be actively demonstrating the firearms to law enforcement or government agencies as certified by a letter expressing interest or demand. So you have to have a department advocating on your behalf so that you could take transfer of a post 1986 machine gun.
For manufacturers, there is the expectation of demonstration, so you can't just make a machine gun for your own usage, it has to be demonstrated.
So there are only 12 m134 "gatling" guns that were registed prior to 1986 that can be purchased by your average Joe with a clean record. Most are prized pieces in a collection and will likely only see the auction block once a generation. They fire 2,000-6,000 rounds a minute, an M4(full auto AR-15) fires 700-970 rounds per minute.
There are supposedly also 6 transferrable mk19 automatic 40mm grenade launchers out there which go for over $600k. Problem with those is each round costs between $400 and $3000 and takes 9-18 months to transfer.
It’s because in the USA you could legally own machine guns before the 1970s(?). Since the USA rarely retroactively makes things illegal… all the transferable miniguns were made before then and are registered to the ATF.
They're talking about the minigun