Republican lawmakers in West Virginia and Kentucky are working on making it easier for Americans to acquire fully automatic firearms — a move that might catch on in other red states.
Machine guns — defined by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives as a firearm that can fire “automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger” — are heavily regulated in the United States.
While such weapons can be privately owned, Americans are greatly limited in what they can buy and must jump through numerous hoops to seal the deal.
‘This is our constitutional right.’
Per the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act, civilians are barred from possessing a machine gun manufactured after May 19, 1986. Limited supply means a higher price — Silencer Central says that prospective buyers should expect to spend a minimum of $6,000 to $10,000.
Interested American buyers at least 21 years of age, neither a felon nor a fugitive, and living in a state without a machine gun ban must pass an AFT background check, pay a one-time $200 transfer tax, and get approval from the government in order to take possession. Once those hurdles are cleared, they can take the machine gun home but fire it only on closed target ranges.
In West Virginia, Republican state Sens. Chris Rose and Zack Maynard recently introduced legislation that would establish within the West Virginia State Police an office of public defense that would oversee the procurement and sale of machine guns to “qualified members of the public,” namely any citizen presently eligible to purchase and possess firearms under West Virginia and federal law.
The Cowboy State Daily reported that the new office would be authorized to transfer newer machine guns to state residents.
Blaze News has reached out to state Sen. Rose for clarification about whether out-of-state American citizens would be able to acquire a machine gun from the proposed authority.
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Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The preamble of the bill states both that “the Framers understood the Second Amendment to guarantee armament parity between the American citizen and government infantryman” and that “it is in the public interest of the State of West Virginia and its people that American citizens be armed and better able to assist in the defense of the State, and to resist tyranny, using bearable firearms commonly used in modern warfare.”
The legislation would ensure that machine guns made available to citizens in the state through the proposed office would “be the same as, or of like kind to, those machineguns currently in use by law enforcement or the United States Armed Forces, and shall include but not be limited to AR-15/M16-platform, M249-type, and MP5-type Machineguns.”
Kentucky state Rep. TJ Roberts (R) has introduced a nearly identical bill that would create a sub-office within the Kentucky State Police to acquire and transfer guns to qualified Kentuckians.
Roberts stated on X, “Law-abiding Kentuckians should be able to own any type of firearm they choose (including machine guns), as this is our constitutional right.”
The Kentucky version specifies that a “qualified person” is “a person who is eligible to purchase and possess firearms under Kentucky and federal law.” In Kentucky, out-of-state residents who are U.S. citizens have the right to purchase firearms.
Mark Jones, the national director of Gun Owners of America — the organization that authored the bill — told Cowboy State Daily that similar legislation is “doable in Wyoming” and that a Wyoming version of the bill might be introduced next year.
“Prior to the session, I had discussions about it with Wyoming legislators, but we didn’t have enough time to draft a bill,” Jones said. “We decided to focus on the four major (gun-related) bills that are now poised to pass in 2026 and reconsider the 1071 concept next year.”
While recognizing this legal approach as workable, George Mocsary, a law professor at the University of Wyoming and director of the school’s Firearms Research Center, told the Cowboy State Daily that Congress might intervene and overturn the proposed law if passed.
He noted, however, “If it works, I could totally see it catching on, particularly here in Wyoming, and with our northern neighbors in Montana.”
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Second amendment, 2a, Guns, Machinegun, Machine gun, Machine guns, Firearms, Weapons, Constitution, West virginia, Kentucky, Wyoming, Politics
