Introduction & Open-Ended Newbie Question

[classwarfare]

Hey, y'all. I am new here, and I live in Asheville, North Carolina (U.S.A.). I have recently started remembering my childhood fascination with machine guns, and I am wondering exactly what I would need to do to make those old dreams come true. Toward that end, I have the following question:

Let's say we temporarily put aside all issues of legal restriction, labor and quality, and consider just one thing: Expense.

Has anyone ever looked into finding the cheapest way to obtain a full-auto firearm? Secondary questions: Is DIY parts-kit assembly of a clone, then conversion of that clone, the cheapest way to go? I am open to pretty much any kind of device from any time period.

Your help will be much appreciated!

[P71pilot]

The only legal way to do it is to purchase a select fire weapon from a class 2/3 FFL holder. You must pass a thorough backround check and pay a $200 fee. On top of that these select fire weapons usually go from $4000-$30000. Now if you know a close Buddy with a machine shop, pick a parts kit and away you go. You SHOULD NOT do anything illegally pertaining to a firearm. They could lock you up for a long time. I know a guy with a select fire sten and FAL. Neither are legal registered weapons

[Chaz88]

Better do a lot more research. My understanding is, outside of a licensed manufacturer / dealer, law enforcement, or military, you can only legally obtain a select fire firearm if it was registered before May 19, 1986. As I recall there are less than 200,000 in the country that are legally transferable, after you jump through all the ATF hoops.

EDIT: illegally acquiring or modifying, such as with a parts kit or machine shop, could and likely will get you a $100,000 fine, 10 years in prison, and a lifetime removal of your gun rights.

[classwarfare]

This is all theoretical. I would never dare to dream of illegal activities, because I am an upright, good, decent protestant Christian American citizen!

Now, back to my original question: Let me restate it.

Let's assume that I live in Somalia or in Antarctica or inside of a blimp. I'm not asking questions related to legalities in the U.S. I am wondering if a parts-kit-assembled clone is going to be the cheapest way to obtain a firearm that can, in theory, be converted into a full-auto, and, if so, which parts-kit assembly might be the least expensive?
SKS? POF-5? Uzi carbine? AR? Any others? I am even talking about WW2-era guns, if there are any of those kits on the market anywhere.

[Willie Lowman]

temporarily put aside all issues of legal restriction

I am going to assume that you mean you already understand and intend to follow the laws set forth in the National Firearms Act.

consider just one thing: Expense

The cheapest transferable machinegun you will find is a M11 submachinegun. They are going for about $4000 dollars these days.

Is DIY parts-kit assembly of a clone, then conversion of that clone, the cheapest way to go? I am open to pretty much any kind of device from any time period.

That is illegal as hell.

If I can give you one piece of advice, don't ask about creating unregistered/illegal machine guns here.



edit to add...

Let's assume that I live in Somalia or

Then you could trade twelve goats for a AK-47.

[dakota.potts]

I have to imagine that the absolute cheapest machine gun you could make would be a STEN, considering they were made in machine shops in the 40's with not much more than pipes and some stock steel to my understanding.

Conversion of a semi auto might be cheap if you know what you're doing and what you consider converting. Do you want a working selector switch, or just something that slam fires when you hold the trigger down?

In the US, the cheapest to go is something like a Cobray Mac11 or a Star carbine. They start at about $4,000-$5,000.

If you're talking about a place where there are no legal restrictions, the cheapest way is probably to obtain one that's already made. When my dad was in Egypt, he was offered an AK for $15. Apparently there was a trade there for selling service members firearms and disassembling them for discreet shipping to the US - that was the story I heard anyways. Point being, you could probably buy one in a country like that cheaper and easier than you could make one.

[classwarfare]

Dakota.Potts:

Thank you for being someone who actually replies to my question.

I am seeing a STEN parts collection here:
https://apexgunparts.com/product_inf...oducts_id/3778

As for your second question: I don't really know if I would want a working selector switch or the "slam-fire" trigger mechanism. Either, I guess.

As I said, I am more or less day dreaming at this point.

[dakota.potts]

To my knowledge (I am not an expert) it is relatively easy to make an open bolt submachine gun that will fire as long as the trigger is held down, but this isn't the safest design. You can apparently do it on some modern guns simply by filing the sear enough, but it's not a reliable method of fire and people have died that way.

I've thought before about building a STEN semi auto clone, but in the US they're also required to shoot from a closed bolt, and apparently they're had to manufacture that way.

I do have to talk again about pertinent laws. I'm not sure if you live somewhere outside of the US where this is legal or plan to go somewhere that it is, but it's not even easy for an SOT to make the kind of stuff you're talking about, and it is concerning when you start talking about the cheapest way to do it, irrespective of local laws, especially when you start insisting that you wouldn't do anything of the sort because you're a decent Christian American citizen. It does have a very ATF undercover agent vibe to it, if you know what I'm seeing. Regardless, we have to put all of these disclaimers out there because this will be searchable for forever and an age from now (I regularly pull up 15 year old TFL threads in my google searches) and people reading this then may not be able to ask questions about it.

All of that said, if the question we're asking is entirely academic, I have to imagine that a person with machining experience and access to a lathe, mill, dremel, and standard power tools could create a smoothbore, open bolt 9mm sub gun for around $100-$150 in parts. It wouldn't be pretty, accurate, and maybe not even reliable or safe, but it would dump ammo. That was exactly the idea behind the STEN, which could be made by resistance forces in machine shops in basements even with unsteady access to a power supply.

Other than black market trade in parts of the world where they can be obtained cheap, that would seem to me to be the cheapest way to create a machine gun if you weren't worried about any factor besides making it dump bullets. That or modifying certain existing firearms. Giving too much more information than that is probably not good etiquette on a forum like this - the information is out there and not illegal to have if you really cared, but could be shown as evidence that one planned to build a machine gun if you have certain parts to do it with and live in a country where they are illegal or restrictive (almost the entire world at this point)

[Skans]

Yeah...........I'm not touching this one!

[Tom Servo]

Let's assume that I live in Somalia or in Antarctica or inside of a blimp. I'm not asking questions related to legalities in the U.S.

But this forum addresses legalities in the U.S. Some of the questions you're asking entail things that would run afoul of U.S. laws.

Whether or not they're hypothetical, some of those questions could arouse a great deal of suspicion.