Moondog, under the current regulations of the NFA in the US, some of the M2 heavies might fall before the cut-off date, but I doubt that there are any still in service that do, and even if there were, it wouldn't be worth the work to make them "transferable" and surplus them. As for the M-4s they likewise won't be surplussed. If anything the uppers might, but the lowers won't, as the fire-control group is where the fun bits are. But since they were all produced after the machine-gun ban cut-off, the cannot be surplussed. Or at least that is my understanding. As it stands though, the ar-15 platform (current M-4) will stay in service for at least another 20 years, as they are doing update packages for it, and the M-27 won't be taking it over. There will of course be talk of it, but until there is a major change in ammo, and it becomes economically viable to change, they won't be shifting it.
Wayno, the stats are not very good, many places don't collate and collect them in the US, so all we have are guesses. But even the worst case estimates still put the actual rate of violence lower than what it was in the 70s, Steven Pinker does a good bit of research on it in "better angels of our nature" despite the difficulty of pulling the numbers together for the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_veh ... S._by_year High was 54,589 in 1972. If the FBI says that there were just over 8000 gun murders in the US in 2014 then the actual number may well be a bit higher, but I can't see it being by that much.
The odds are always that you will be killed by a family member, or yourself.
At some point the retailers have to assume that the legal protection they fall under will get taken away, at some point someone will buy a gun legally and the warning signs will have been evident to the employee that they should not be selling that gun. At that point, when they are legally liable for the actions caused, it will change in a heartbeat. As I said before, I think there will be a free market solution before there is a legal one, and if these boycotts and similar actions are the cause then we need to have them. The 2A stuff has become a religion entrenched with dogma, it has its martyrs and saints, and until someone nails some notes to the door nothing will change. But I think we have some people getting the hammers out, and things may very well change quickly. Will that cause civil unrest? That is something I cannot predict. It very well may, but to be honest most of the 2A guys are middle aged, and freedom fighters are more often young and dumb. Of course that also assumes that any regulation has any logic to it.... And we all know how likely that is.