Automatic Weapons Are Already Heavily Regulated and Gun Control Laws Don’t Work - Reason.com

Automatic Weapons Are Already Heavily Regulated and Gun Control Laws Don’t Work - Reason.com
"Stephen Paddock "appears to have used at least one fully automatic rifle" during his murderous rampage in Las Vegas, according to the Wall Street Journal.
...If true, though, it demonstrates the pointlessness of the predictable calls for tighter gun restrictions issued by the usual suspects.
That's because automatic rifles—machine guns—have been tightly regulated at the federal level since 1934, and subjected to further restrictions since then.
...short of outright prohibition, automatic rifles are subject to just about every rule and restriction that has been proposed by opponents of easy civilian possession. 
...But what if Paddock's weapons were illegally acquired, or illegally converted to automatic, or were semiautomatic weapons mistakenly identified as machine guns?
Black markets and illegal acts exist everywhere, under every legal regime.
I've written at length about the long history, not just in the United States, but around the world, of overwhelming defiance of gun laws.
...Banning private sales of firearms has also been proposed in certain quarters, but without any suggestion of how such a prohibition would be enforced..."