Comment by ashtonkem

Machine guns are actually quite rare in the US. All new machine guns were banned for civilian ownership in 1983, meaning that if you want to get one it has to be one of a small number of pre-1983 registered examples. They also come with some pretty intense storage, transit, and transfer requirements that wouldn’t surprise most Europeans. The end result is that legal machine guns are a rare collectors item, with examples starting at about $5,000 for a low quality sub-machine gun, with automatic rifles costing more than $20,0000.

I’d actually argue that the regulation of machine guns, suppressors, and short barreled rifles has been extremely effective, as it’s extremely rare to hear about any of these items being used criminally.