Discussion»Questions»Science and Technology» Is it true that there are instructional videos on YouTube showing you how to modify a gun to make it semi-automatic? If true, why is it OK?
I don't know if it true but it would not surprise me if it is. I've neither the need nor wish to try looking for anything to do with guns apart perhaps from historical material, and that related to warships or artillery, not small-arms.
No-one with any sense is saying it is OK - its continued existence would simply show that YouTube's managers have not removed it.
There is something about guns that evokes very strong emotions in human beings. Either pro or anti. I suppose the something is that guns are the favorite weapons of choice to kill people..murder people. I mean cannons work too but they are unwieldy. I expect flamethrowers, while spectacular, are heavy and hot. Bombs require planes or suicide vests. Nope. The gun is the weapon of choice for a variety of reasons. A bullet at a time when you have to pull the trigger for each one is inconvenient. So someone thought of making it automatic. I don't know what the configuration or mechanism is that makes a single-shot weapon into a multiple repeating shot weapon but I expect it is intricate and complicated. Semi-automatic guns are legal I guess. It is the fully automatic gun that isn't. So some compassionate person invented a bump shot or something to convert the semi into the fully. Ah. Isn't progress wunnerful? Then they prepare/provide/create instructional videos so that your ordinary neighbor can do it himself. Of what use is a fully automatic weapon besides murdering/killing people? Is it used for target practice or skeet shooting or taking out deer or birds? Or is the target alwas and only human beings? And so it goes. Thank you for your reply Durdle. Apologies for the lengthy comment. I guess I needed to say it and you just happened to here! :)
I don't know much about gun mechanisms but I'd have it not possible to convert a single-shut side-arm to even semi-automatic assault weapon.
However, Rosie is right - semi- and fully- automatic weapons were designed for one thing only, killing people.
A few years ago group of British lawyers suggested in the wake of a man having been convicted in the UK courts for illegally re-activating guns in his home workshop, that private ownership of all machine-tools suitable and required for such purposes be licenced. What they appeared not to know until enough people told them, was that such machines and tools are standard items used by many thousands of people perfectly innocently and legally and pleasurably, for such hobbies as model-engineering, clock-making and vehicle restoration. It supports a flourishing trade too, in new and second-hand equipment and materials. The proposal would have burdened such pursuits with complex and costly bureaucracy, and done nothing to stop illegal arms trading anyway, in a country with very strict gun laws and no popular desire for private gun ownership outside of licenced, specific shooting sports and farm pest-control. It was quietly dropped.
No, you cannot modify a bolt, lever, or pump action firearms into semi-automatic firearms. You would just buy a semi-automatic firearm.
I have an semi-automatic 410 shotgun. My son used a semi-automatic 12 guage shotgun on the school trap shooting team. My husband had semi-automatic 22 for hunting squirrel and rabbit.
Durdle 