Semiauto versions of machine guns are a way to have examples of historically significant and mechanically interesting guns without having to wrangle with NFA transfers and the astronomical price of transferrable legal machine guns. However, they are not particularly common. Very few OEM manufacturers make semiauto versions of military machine guns (FN USA being the best example of one who does, followed by Ohio Ordnance). Most of them are made from parts kits by small entrepreneurial gunsmiths - like Smith Manufacturing Group, Midwest Metal Supply, and others. As parts kit supply waxes and wanes, the options available change accordingly (at one time, we have semiauto MG34 and MG42 options, because parts kits with barrels were readily available).

In today's video, we are going to look at how these semiauto creations are done. The three main steps are creating a new receiver, ensuring that it is a semiauto receiver and not legally considered a machine gun itself, and then converting the gun in question to fire from a closed bolt. There are two standard ways to do that conversion, and we will look at examples of both.