The National Firearms Act passed way back in 1934. In 1986, federal law was changed so that only guns made before that date could be bought and sold lawfully by private citizens, assuming they jumped through all the NFA hurdles.

These two gun control measures are some of the most restrictive in the nation.

We also see a lot of reports of machine guns causing problems on our streets. These are generally full-auto switches that are attached to guns that don't fall under NFA guidelines. But we'd be foolish to assume that's the only way criminals skirt the NFA.

After all, it seems that a guy in North Carolina who has been described as the "AK Guru" to law enforcement has been (allegedly) making actual machine guns.

A North Carolina man has been arrested after being accused of making and selling hundreds of machine guns.

Investigators were initially tipped off after arresting another man in Wake County.

The defendant was allegedly described to FBI agents as "AK Guru" also known as Earl Carter of Hamlet, which is in Richmond County near the South Carolina border

The FBI arrested Carter after going undercover and seeing Carter's operation at his home.

The criminal complaint said FBI agents learned that "Carter has made and sold hundreds of machine guns to date. Agents also learned he makes them by either modifying legal firearms or piecing together parts from deconstructed machine guns to make working guns."

The complaint says the FBI used a confidential informant and another defendant who agreed to cooperate with law enforcement.

One of those cooperating with the FBI estimated that Carter sold somewhere around 1,000 machine guns that he then sold to various groups.

While I don't think buying machine guns should be as difficult as it is under the law, the truth remains that the law is the law, and Carter is accused of ignoring it for his own profit. It means that the laws that keep me from buying a machine gun--I could probably get the approval easily enough, but the cost is way beyond what I can justify to the spousal unit--didn't stop him from making and selling these weapons.

These are the most tightly controlled guns on the market. They're so tightly controlled that the ATF knows where every single lawful machine gun is and who has it. It's everything anti-gunners want for the rest of our guns.

And it didn't do a damn thing to stop him.

That's because, if he did what he's accused of, he actually stood to profit more because of the law than he might have without it. That's a perverse incentive to break the laws in the first place, especially if one is inclined to ignore such rules.

More importantly, though, laws only stop the law-abiding. They keep me from making machine guns for sale but they wouldn't stop someone who had the knowledge and had no interest in following the laws. 

How many machine guns are now out and about that aren't registered, aren't regulated, and aren't in the hands of law-abiding citizens? More importantly, how many law-abiding citizens are going to find themselves out-gunned because the law keeps them from being as well armed as the criminals who intend to harm them?