Full-autos are fun to shoot but when it comes down to it, a semi-auto is more useful in many cases. People with poor training or people under extreme stress (which is pretty common when shooting at other people) tends to waste ammo when not necessary. And with good trigger control you could put three rounds into the same target with better control, and three rounds is pretty much all you need.

Sorry if I sound like a rocking chair commando with all my "combat experiance" ;).

Most guns however are not full-auto only so you can have both semi-automatic and fully-automatic fire.

I'm not saying a fully-automatic/select fire should be a cash & carry gun -I'm just saying that they should lift the ban on the manufacture of firearms for the civilian market.
That way the cost of select fire weapons will not be ridiculously high (like $15,000 for a full-auto m14) simply because of the limited amount of pre-1986 automatics.

Remember only 2 people have been murdered with legally owned civilian machineguns since 1934, that's saying something.

Well, on the one hand, it says that the NFA basically worked. On the other hand, the fact that the FOPA was passed demonstrates why some gun control laws get passed for frivolous, stupid reasons, and why being skeptical of their intent is a very healthy mindset.

Not necessarily.
You must have overlooked that I said legally owned civilian machine guns.

The statistics for illegally owned machineguns I'm sure is much higher for murders since 1934.

Just like when the brady campaign or whoever said that Assault Weapons murder had decreased it ignores the fact that murder rates stayed the same but they just occured with weapons other than assault weapons so there is no real difference.

Actually, illegal machine gun use by criminals is very rare (contrary to what Hollywood often portrays).

I think it's kind of a moot point with the AWB because of the fact that for most classes of criminals, military-type weapons are a bit too expensive and unnecessary for their purposes.

True but I know for a fact that more than 2 people have been murdered with an illegally owned machine-gun since 1934.

But it really isn't like stret punks can walk around the corner and just find some guy they has "the connections" and can get a full auto AK47. Most confiscated guns I've been seeing are little pee shooters

Oh, no doubt. But I'm pretty sure that there were more criminals using machine guns back in the days when Tommy Guns could be bought at Sears, versus today.

Also, many of those being used in crimes today seem to be converted from semi-autos. The North Hollywood bank robbers, for instance, used Norinco AKs, an HK91, and a custom-built AR-15, all converted illegally to full-auto.

Don't you mean two Romanian and one Hungarian AKM variant? ;)

I think that was just in the movie. From what I remember, the ones used in the actual shootout were all pre-89 Norinco Type 56S.

Then again, maybe Thell Reed did better research than me. The M16 he built for the movie was pretty close to the one used in the actual shootout (going by the picture that GunNutHK posted).