It has been illegal for your average American to own a fully automatic weapon since the 1930’s, due to the manifestly unConstitutional National Firearms Act. There are only two legal ways around this:
1) Getting a federal firearms license, which is not only expensive but it also deletes your 4th Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure
2) “Bump Fire” tricks.
“Bump Fire” refers to techniques or gadgets that let you simulate high cyclic rate full-auto firing. You still only get a single round fired per trigger pull, but the trick is that the gun rocks as you fire, and the result is that it slams back and forth in your hand and thus your finger functions the trigger quickly. This can be accomplished – sometimes – by simply holding the gun loosely. There are small spring loaded widgets that you can buy that fit up against the trigger to help you do this. Sadly, bump firing might be a dandy way to blow through a whole lot of ammo in a hurry, but it’s not been a good way to fire “full auto” while actually aiming at a target. In order for bump firing to work, you pretty much have to fire from the hip; makes for entertaining Hollywood movie-crap, but it’s a terrible way to do anything productive.
But it seems this problem may have been solved. The “Slide Fire” replaces the buttstock of an AR-15 or an AK-47; the weapon can slide back and forth within the stock. When the trigger is pulled, the gun slides back due to recoil; the hand holding onto the forestock pulls the gun forward, which brings the trigger back up against the trigger… rinse and repeat. You control rate of fire, and number of rounds fired, by controlling the forestock.
It sounds dodgy, but from the looks of it, it seems to work. It’s not as good as an optimized fully automatic weapon, but since it’s only a $370 or so additional cost to a $700 or so gun, and a fully automatic AR-15 would run you well over ten grand *and* cost you your soul, if you really feel the need to throw a hell of a lot of lead downrange in a hurry, this seems like a decent way to go about it.
[youtube wMQe3zBuNRY]
Obviously this would seem to be the sort of product that the BATF would love to ban, but their basis for doing so would be dubious since the firearm operates on the basis of one shot per trigger pull. It’s just lets you pull the trigger *really* fast.