The gun store owner was lazy.
He sells three guns and he wants to close early.
shareHaha it was such a throwaway line from the movie I never gave it much thought. I wonder how many guns a store like that generally sells in a day. I'm not up on 1984 gun laws but could you buy a fully automatic Uzi at a gun store back then?
shareAccording to Wikipedia it was around 2 years after this movie that they were banned from being sold in stores in the U.S.
shareYou can still buy class three weapons (full automatics) in the US but there are a ton of background checks and they take a long time to get. You can no longer produce or import class three for the civilian market so what is here is all that will be here unless the law is repealed. I can't speak for what the law may or may not have been in California at the time or now.
shareYou can only buy ones that are already registered with the ATF in accordance with NFA '34, and that registry was closed in 1986. That means the newest one you can legally buy is one manufactured in 1986.
share"According to Wikipedia it was around 2 years after this movie that they were banned from being sold in stores in the U.S."
Full-autos haven't been an "over-the-counter" gun since the National Firearms Act of 1934. In 1984, most gun shops didn't stock them, because someone with a standard Federal Firearms License wasn't legally allowed to be a dealer of "machine guns". You'd have had to find an FFL holder who had paid the Special Occupation Tax necessary to sell the type of NFA firearm that you were looking for. Then you would've had to pay $200 worth of extortion money to Uncle Sam to get your "tax stamp", pass an extensive background check, and get ready for a long wait (maybe a year or more) before getting permission from Big Brother.
In 1986 the registry was closed, but you could, and can, still buy full-autos that are already registered with the ATF in accordance with NFA '34. Because nothing has been able to be registered since 1986, the pool of legally available full-autos are obviously limited to ones made in 1986 or earlier.
You couldn't buy a FULL AUTO Uzi (you'd need a conversion kit for that) but you could buy a semi-auto Uzi no sweat. I went into a gun store once and saw them stacked like cordwood!!!
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