You can order parts to make your gun fully automatic straight to your door without filling out a Form 4 if you want to commit a federal crime that the ATF likely will follow up on. You can order suppressors straight to your door without filling out a Form 4 if you want to commit a federal crime that the ATF likely will follow up on. You can _not_ buy thousands of rounds worth of any ammo other than .22 with a week's worth of minimum wage pay (if you know something that I don't, let me know where you're finding these deals). The time will probably come for poison like this very soon.
None of this is to say that terrorism isn't fairly easy, all things considered. The law does very little to stop these things before they happen. The big takeaway is that the vast majority of people aren't violent and unreasonable. You've always been able to do these things, usually more easily in the past than you could today, but we've never had issues with it (at least in the US) to the point where the average person you bump into on the street will have personally experienced it.
You’re correct on the vast majority of people aren’t violent and unreasonable part… but I very much think you’re missing a point.
Yes, you could mostly always buy something like a part to make a gun fully automatic or a suppressor online. Anybody with the slightest technical skills could make the full auto parts with some metal stock & a dremel. But a lot of people aren’t thinking into it that much when they’re impulsive.
But in the year 2000, you would have to put a bit of effort into finding these things online, and if you were underage it would have been much harder to instantly/easily purchase.
Now wish.com and everything else exist - you can find the parts in seconds, and you have a plethora of ways to easily purchase them underage & shipped to your door in two days.
Yes, the vast majority of these are ATF/Fed or whatever else honeypots… but sometimes that doesn’t really matter if you already have a plan & are ready the day your parts come in.
1000 rounds of 7.62x39 is ~$350. Do minimum wage workers not take in ~$350 weekly anymore?
You can make any firearm with a pistol grip that has the charging handle fixed to the bolt carrier full-auto by tying a string to a charging handle, wrapping it around the grip and then the trigger. You could very easily figure this out by just sitting down and looking at the gun. I can't think of a single instance where somebody has done this in a mass shooting. The fact of the matter is that full-auto guns are nowhere near as dangerous or "useful" for mass shootings as people think they are.
1000 rounds of Russian steel-case can be found with some effort for a price like that right now. With the Russian import ban, it's getting significantly harder to find. Federal minimum wage is $7.25 -- you might be able get 1000 rounds of 9mm if you find a deal and are willing to spend literally 100% of your paycheck on it. 1000 rounds of anything other than 9mm on federal minimum wage is a fluke that cannot be reliably repeated.
Yes I am very much aware of the shoelace machine gun per the ATF.
The shoelace machine gun is essentially non-useable for any real form of attack. It’s stupid & a straw man to bring up imo.
What you can order with overnight to two day delivery is quite a bit different in function than the shoelace machine gun. I think you are very much missing the bulk of the point here.
Minimum wage where? $7.25 for 40 hours is still $290 before taxes, yes? That's federal minimum wage in the United States, and that's only for untipped workers on W-2 who can manage to get a full time schedule.
Some states have substantially higher minimums, though, and don't allow wage discrimination against wait staff.
"You can _not_ buy thousands of rounds worth of any ammo other than .22 with a week's worth of minimum wage pay (if you know something that I don't, let me know where you're finding these deals)."
It's pretty close. Ammoseek shows 9mm starting at ~$0.30 per round, and most other popular pistol calibers starting at ~$0.40 to ~$0.45 per round. And it's easy to find better deals if you're checking the r/gundeals subreddit periodically. That puts 2000 rounds of 9mm at around the gross income weekly income for someone earning $15/hour.
The West Coast is not the entire US. Most states don't have a $15 minimum wage. That pricing is mostly at 1000 round quantities. 50 round boxes are usually between $20 to $25 a box.
The assertion is correct in the sense that somebody living in a state with an exceptionally high minimum wage can buy a thousand rounds of ammo that isn't .22 in a week's pay if they have absolutely no other expenses is just barely correct in a strictly technical sense, but doesn't really add up for the purposes of this conversation. Even if you were willing to go completely broke spending every cent you make on ammo, you would need another $500 minimum to buy a cheap carbine and enough magazines to carry 200 rounds with you in a reasonable manner.
None of this is to say that terrorism isn't fairly easy, all things considered. The law does very little to stop these things before they happen. The big takeaway is that the vast majority of people aren't violent and unreasonable. You've always been able to do these things, usually more easily in the past than you could today, but we've never had issues with it (at least in the US) to the point where the average person you bump into on the street will have personally experienced it.