According to Firearm Chronicles
Once upon a time, you could buy a machinegun through the mail and have it delivered straight to your home. While the weapons were used in crime from time to time, particularly in large cities like Chicago (why does that sound familiar?), plenty more were just kept at home for recreational purposes.
Now, the only way some of us will ever get to shoot full-auto is at a rental range.
Yet an op-ed at The New Republic wants to suggest a “what if” where that’s the future of everything from an AR-15 to an SKS.
Could shooting ranges be the future of Bushmasters, of SKS rifles and AR-15s and AR-10s? It seems the thought experiment we need in Second Amendment debates, where pro-gun advocates warn that federal ownership registries and licensing are the sine qua non of government tyranny. Yet the United States has successfully depleted the supply of machine guns, as well as the ease and attractiveness of their use by criminals, with exactly these measures: a gun database and a thoroughgoing application process. (That said, the left should be as wary as libertarians—perhaps more so these days—of the potential risks that gun registries run as a tool of discrimination and harassment; one need not sympathize, as some on the gun right do, with David Koresh and the Branch Davidians to acknowledge that the ATF has abused its oversight powers before.)