It only bothers me when people who know better speak of "the Glieseian solar system." 
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- Edit 1Before modification by Joel at 26/12/2012 05:35:05 PM
Galaxy meaning Milky Way and all 
I thought we long ago established the universe does not revolve around Earth OR Sol. It is one thing when the general public makes that common error, but I wince when Lt. Commander Data or Neil deGrasse Tyson does so.
This thread is the only reason I now know of the latter, and I am a little annoyed Browning used the same term for a wholly different weapon than that they made half a century ago. Apparently, there is a redundantly named "Browning BAR," referred to as such because of its auto-LOADING feature. As you can see from the below link to Brownings site, it looks nothing like the old BAR, which stands to reason since it has none of the same parts. It is ONLY semi-auto; again, I have seen nothing to suggest it can be converted to full auto, and instead seen several categorical statements it CANNOT, by any means.
That is probably true then, from a practical standpoint. Of course anything can be made full auto with enough modification even if all that's left over is the barrel of the original parts. Some manufacturers have been jumping through hoops to make weapons it can't be done to, or is very hard to, and I'll use that as anecdotal evidence of why its not that hard in their eyes with most guns.
Well, where there is a will there is a way, but that does not make it is as quick, easy and inexpensive as so many claim. That an inexperienced gunsmith and machinist with a shop and tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment can MANUFACTURE and install an auto sear or whatever else they need does not mean I can turn any semi-auto into a full auto with just a metal file and five minutes free time. That is a rather common but perniciously false rumor that needs to be put to bed in the gun control discussion (then there will only be about thousand left....
)I'm going to have to skip around a bit, so apoligies if I skip anytihng major here.
Understood; no worries.
That also stands to reason though, because it was designed as a civilian hunting rifle, never at any time intended for fully automatic fire. I am no gunsmith but, again, it is only logical a fully automatic weapon converted to semi-automatic could easily be converted BACK to fully automatic through removing/replacing/modifying some parts. I would expect it to be more difficult to accomplish that goal with one that was always semi-automatic and never fully automatic.
The big conceptual difference - more than mechanical because there are multiple mechanical means to achieve effectively parallel goals - is that a semi will do everything after a shot to get the next bullet ready but won't fire it until you pull the trigger again, and an auto will fire it if you have the trigger pulled. In some weapons (I won't say most, not sure) this amounts to adding in an extra bit, certainly with anything open bolt the procedure is more complex for semi than auto, but fundamentally -barring some bizarre rifle designs - determination of auto and semi is entirely in the trigger mechanism.
I get the conceptual difference, but the means of acheivement are both mechanical and finite. Again, you know better than I, but I understood the firing pin, chamber and associated mechanisms to be inextricably involved also. Maybe we are just saying the same things differently, but one can easily keep the trigger depressed on every gun of which I am aware; the firing pin just will not keep moving, the shell casing will not continue to be ejected and new rounds will not enter the chamber.
How much US/NATO military issue was designed as fully automatic from the outset and merely retooled as semi-auto in its commercial form (where such forms exist)? I have heard it said that "what can be done can be undone."
The M16 was full auto and a king of jamming, so it got the forward assist built in on to the M16A1 which was full auto, the A2 had single and burst, ditto the A4 (my personal fav weapon) and the A3 was full auto. There aren't as many of these kicking around as AKs and its harder to usefully modify because its a serious precision weapon in terms of the parts, hard to knock up replacements. Every last one of them is easily modded to full auto, A2 and A4, and I mean easily. Here a piece, often called a <a href="https://www.gunpartscorp.com/Manufacturers/AR15M16-33125/M16-34690/M16-37113/M16LowerReceiverButtstockAssembly-37120.htm?page=2">disconnector</a>, is actually responsible for turning the 'full auto' off after a certain number of shots (not listed on the parts but its in the schematic, not for sale obviously) and thus making it burst. In some cases - and here's where the file comes in, you'll have something that looks like a quarter sized disk with, say, 3 grooves in it, and on 3 round burst it catches in each groove and fires again, stick in a fourth groove and its 4-round burst, stick in 5, etc, do it symetrically around the whole length (depending on the bit) and now it's full auto. In others, you could simply remove the thing entirely and render it full auto or replace it with one with no grooves, just a flat disc. It's all about the specific mechanics. Theoretically any semi can be rendered full auto simply by arranging a mechanism that pulls the trigger as soon as it reset, like some home-made spring driven widget you place over a trigger, it would be slower but not really appreciably so compared to human reaction speed. So it can essentially always be done. With the AR-15 though its unavoidable because it is a M16 and the M16 is essentially a full auto weapon retrofitted to semiautomatic.
Right, that last was my point on the AR-15 and all weapons initially designed as full auto military weapons and LATER produced in a modified civilian form. We could remove the afterburners and put in a different engine to produce a subsonic "civilian" F-16, but anyone with the knowledge could restore its factory specs relatively easily; strap its engine and afterburners onto a Piper Cub and the poor thing will just disintegrate. While any gun can theoretically be converted to full auto with sufficient knowledge and means, the original design has a big impact on how practical that is.
So, yeah, if someone turns their AR-15 back into an M-16 it will be fully automatic, but it takes more than filing a firing pin, which will not do the job, and that does not apply to weapons never designed for fully automatic fire.
I'm kinda curious why you'd even be filing the firing pin in the first place.
Just guessing, but I think someone got the idea a shorter firing pin could not fully retract, and I saw someone opine that filing the sides would disable the disconnector.
Frankly, the last guy struck me (and, it seemed, most responders) as a dangerous idiot anyway. He prefaced his "question" by stating, "I am not allowed to own a gun anyway," so he is probably a convicted felon seeking advice on how to illegally make his illegally obtained semi-auto full auto. When more knowledgeable people explained why filing the pin would not do that even if it were legal, it quickly became apparent he was not so much "asking a question" as trolling for answers to dispute. Maybe it is a self-correcting problem, since he is most likely to ruin his illegal obtained weapons if left to his own devices, but reading through the thread I kept thinking, This is why we need to require screening, training and certification for gun purchases....
