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Comment by jboggan | Hacker News Reader

I really want more clarification on the first paragraph. From the author's awkward lingo ("safety key") I get the impression that they do not grasp the technical or legal differences between a semi-automatic AR-15 clone and a fully-automatic M-16. I have a hard time believing that Wilson manufactured a functional M-16 lower, assembled it with a full-auto bolt carrier and had a journalist fire it. That is an unequivocal violation of federal law (since no new machine guns have been allowed for Form 1 manufacture since May of 1986) as opposed to constructing a semi-automatic firearm for personal use. Such confusion in the opening paragraph makes me heavily discount the rest of the article.

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According to wikipedia, Cody Wilson has a Type 7 FFL. If he then acquired Class 2 SOT status, he personally would be able to manufacture his own machine guns (but not transfer ownership of them to the general public).

According to this article from March 2013 (http://www.solidsmack.com/cad-design-news/click-print-gun-wa...), he was seeking Class 2 SOT status at the time and anticipated getting it in early April 2013. I don't know what the outcome of that was.

However considering journalists' reputations for gun knowledge, I am skeptical as well. (I'm also not an expert on gun law, so anyone please correct me if I am mistaken.)

That is a very helpful clarification - I was aware of this tax exemption but didn't realize that Wilson was jumping through the hoops to obtain one. That's something that would be rather germane to the article, especially dramatically opening with a "university dropout" showing off the "M-16" he manufactured. If Wilson has the special occupational taxpayer status then that makes the article even more misrepresentative.

I have seen a semi-automatic AR-15 clone malfunction an spontaneously become fully automatic. They are not so different from a technical perspective.

The firearm in question would have to have been in very poor condition, causing it to slam fire, or have been modified for that to happen (or caused by ammo with really unusually sensitive primers, but that seems even less likely). The differences are key enough that it's really hard to do accidentally and I imagine that one prepared for a journalist would not have had its fire control parts mangled ahead of time or its firing pin jammed forward.

That said, if they have an SOT (which they were trying to get) it's entirely possible that it was made full auto from the start.

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