[geeks] [johnqpublic at hotmail.com: BREAKING NEWS....]

[Kurt Huhn]

Andrew Weiss wrote:
> 
> And can't you just drill it in a certain spot to fix the problem?

Mostly the civilian versions come without a selector switch.  It's easy
enough to modify, but usually totally illegal.

> 
> > Is it hard to get where you are?  I can walk up the street and buy a
> > civilian version of an M16 (if I had about $1400) and ammunition
> > tommorow.  The ammunition, AFAIK, is the same in military and civilian
> > versions of the rifle.  The main difference in the civilian version is
> > that the burst and full-auto selector isn't present.

Let me retract my statement here - the one I wrote on half a cup of
coffee, apparently.  Military and civialian versions take the same
*caliber* and *case*.  However, the round is far from the same -
military weapons are only supposed to fire simple ball munitions - not
anything with hollow points, pre-fragmented, containing grape, or
otherwise designed for maximum damage.  AFAIK, this was outlined
somewhere in the Geneva Accord, but I could be wrong.

I'm surprised the pedants didn't catch that before I did :)
-- 
Kurt
kurt at k-huhn.com