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Old December 29, 2011, 06:36 PM   #8
mboylan
Senior Member
 
Join Date: March 31, 2011
Posts: 120
The ATF has closed perceived loopholes as soon as they have been exploited for the last 25 years.

The purpose of the Hughes Amendment was to fix the supply of transferable machine guns to what it was on May 19, 1986, at about 183,000. The ATF lives and breathes by that intention. Machine guns were not easy to get pre-86. The ATF did not accept Revocable Living Trusts at that time and many CLEOs would not sign for cheap machine guns. Many of those transferables were created in 1985-86.

The $200 tax was about $400 in today's money, not too bad, but enough to keep people away. You could get a semi-auto AR for about $425. With taxes, if you could get approval without an extremely large donation to a police charity, you would pay about $800 for a good converted receiver AR or $1600 in today's dollars. Cheap bulk ammo wasn't really widely available back then either. Feeding the beast was really expensive. Reselling was a problem, too, as you would have to eat the $200 tax you paid. For these reasons, demand was not really very high.

Last edited by mboylan; December 29, 2011 at 07:05 PM.
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