In May of 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed the Firearm Owners Protection Act, which among other things, made the sale of fully-automatic firearms, manufactured before that year, illegal. Owning the guns are still legal. It’s just exceptionally difficult and very expensive.

After the Las Vegas attack which left at least 50 dead and more than 400 wounded, calls for banning full-auto firearms, along with plenty of misinformation, has become rampant. Radio host Andy Cohen, for painful instance, asked why we don’t ban machine guns all together.