What is the trivial solution?
They did two things.
First a large public outreach and education campaign to “don’t do that”.
Second, in the areas where this commonly occurred they halted ammunition sales for, I think, a week before the event (notably New Years and 4th oh July).
I don’t even think the NRA bothered to fight that one.
At the time it had a very notable effect on the volume of gunfire before and after the program went into effect. There was telling news video doing a before and after, and the reduction was significant.
We’re any follow up studies done on the effectiveness? I have no idea. Is it still effective (the was done 30 years ago), I also have no idea. But at the time, it seemed to have some impact.
And as far as solutions go, it was pretty trivial. Fundamentalists will grouse but c’est la vie, but its scope was really limited.
(Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.)
edit: hn is ratelimiting me again so here's my response to @chroma comment
yeah buddy i'm totally aware of the 86 ban but if your family has stuff before then and moved it to a nfa trust then you're cool. cause it wasn't all that expensive before supply was capped. and the cool part is if you got a bunch of full auto AR lowers you can make a shitton of different configurations and they're all still the same thing legally.
literally all you have to do is get a el cheapo thing to screw on the barrel and it cycles fine, sometimes have to tune the gas system but if it's built for the exact model then not much. one guy sometimes brings a m10 and has a closed barrel he fabbed himself for shits and giggles.
and no, we all reload so blanks are actually less expensive than a full round.
we do a shoot too but sometimes it's fun to shoot off in the air? like usually at the end after we finish up fireworks.
why tf are you so pressed about it anyway?
First, because the supply of civilian-owned machine guns was frozen in 1986[1], a mediocre full-auto gun starts at $10,000.
Second, blanks won't cycle a gun designed to fire actual cartridges. You need a blank firing adapter or a gun made to fire only blanks.
Third, because of economies of scale, blanks are significantly more expensive than real ammo. A few mag dumps would exceed $100.
I have a hard time believing that you and your buddies would get blank firing adapters for your ridiculously expensive machine guns so you could burn money even faster than if you were at the range. If everyone handling the guns is sober and you're in a place where the sound of gunfire is acceptable, why not just... set up some targets? It'd be cheaper, more fun, and more believable.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm_Owners_Protection_Act#...
literally all you have to do is get a el cheapo thing to screw on the barrel and it cycles fine, sometimes have to tune the gas system but if it's built for the exact model then not much. one guy sometimes brings a m10 and has a closed barrel he fabbed himself for shits and giggles.
and no, we all reload so blanks are actually less expensive than a full round.
we do a shoot too but sometimes it's fun to shoot off in the air? like usually at the end after we finish up fireworks.
why tf are you so pressed about it anyway?
p.s. would have commented separately earlier but i keep getting ratelimited