Reply #22: Bifton, you're wrong...

[DoNotRefill]

the AWB has nothing to do with machineguns. That's the National Firearms Act of 1934, which was recently struck down by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (that bastion of ultraconservative jurisprudence) as Unconstitutional in U.S. v. Stewart, although the Federal Government is still enforcing it while it winds it's way through the courts.

The AWB bans certain features from semi-auto weapons. It bans flash supressors, bayonet lugs, and folding stocks. So, the gun industry took off the flash suppressors and put on muzzle breaks, removed the bayonet lugs, and "pinned" the folding stocks, and started marketing the new, AWB-exempt "post ban" rifle. It's called "compliance". The net result: "post ban" rifles are insanely popular, far more popular than the original "assault weapons" were in the first place. this probably has something to do with the effects of prohibition generally. They're just as powerful as the old assault weapons. And the only way that they're less dangerous is that you can't put a bayonet on the end. The result of that is that the number of criminally motivated random drive-by bayonetings has dropped from a high of zero incidents a year to the current low of zero incidents a year.