Machine guns as an investment

Most people, while they have the right, don't have the ability to buy a machine gun like Powell's. For instance, a Heckler &Koch MP5K machine pistol would fetch $15,000 on the civilian market, Powell said.

"It is doctors and lawyers — and other people with big money — who buy them," Powell said. "You don't have thugs owning machine guns — unless they're illegal ones — and an illegal machine gun is only worth 10 years in jail."

That is because it is the law — not the manufacturing costs — that drive the price. The federal government has outlawed the manufacture of machine guns for the civilian market in the United States since 1986. Only machine guns that were legally owned by civilians before that year can be sold privately.

Steve Hardin, vice president for political action for the Georgia Sports Shooting Association, said there are about 100,000 legally owned machine guns in private hands in the United States. "I know people who have bought them and never shot them and watched them increase in value by $1,000 every year," he said.

AJC