400-Dollar .308 VS 100,000-Dollar .308

Hey, John Hickok here. Today we're going to compare two, uh, firearms with a drastically different price tag. We have here the $400, roughly. These are kind of estimates, but roughly $400 CBA Scout Chamberlain 308. And then right here we have the $100,000 308, better known as the M60 machine gun. Okay. Very different price tags and for very different reasons. And there's some complicated reasons why this one is so much more expensive. And I want to explain all that and give you some kind of idea of, uh, why this is so much more expensive than this one and what the different applications are for these two firearms with very different price tags. But first I want to thank the people who make all of this possible. SDI, the Sonoran Desert Institute, and get some distance learning, firearms technology, drone technology, all kinds of cool stuff over there. Also Davidson's Gallery of Guns, they offer a guaranteed lifetime replacement under purchase. Uh, really good people over there. So check out everything they have to offer. Okay. All right. CBA Scout. Both of these fire the same round, the 308 7.62x51 NATO. And to prove it to you, I'm going to strip some rounds out of this belt and fire it in the Scout. Look at that, that one came out clean. That one came out. There's probably some, uh, if there's any, uh, machine gunners watching right now that can give me some good tips on how to pull individual rounds out of the belt, but that's usually how I do it. Okay. All right. We've got a Leupold scope on here. It's just a kind of your basic, you know, three to nine Leupold. It is a break action, single shot, breech loader. Uh, this, the CBA Scout came about around 2010 versus, you know, sometime in the 1950s over there with the M60. So definitely a newer, it's a newer gun, but actually an older design really. Because, you know, we've seen a lot of things similar to this going back into the, deep into the 1800s. All right. Let's shoot a big square over there. Pretty cool how this works. So you just pull down on the trigger guard like this really hard. It breaks open. It doesn't eject. Let's do another one. There we go. So probably doesn't take a lot of imagination to understand why something like this may not be too expensive. Now, a rifle like this, you know, could definitely get up there in price, I would say, but because of the simplicity of the design, um, it definitely allows for this to be like a more budget friendly type of rifle. You know, we've got a synthetic stock, just not a lot of moving parts. Just a very, very simple design. Uh, you know, the purpose of something like this, I know that there are, uh, some states that are allowing people to use breech loaders like this during muzzle loading season. I'm not a big hunter, so I'm not going to speak on that too much, but I know that there's some purpose for that. And I'm not, I'm not, again, I'm not a hunter, but, uh, for what I know about hunting, typically you fire a single shot. You want a one shot kill, right? So this would be primarily used as a hunting rifle. Um, whereas you probably wouldn't take this into a deer stand, despite the fact that you would get in a lot of trouble if you did that, even if you were allowed to, I don't think that you would most likely. Very different capacity. Okay. Now the capacity, well, I don't know. I was going to say the capacity doesn't have anything to do with the price difference, but it kind of does, I guess, to a degree, uh, capacity, one capacity, infinite technically. I mean, you know, until you melt the barrel down, right. Theoretically, if, uh, the gun could handle the heat, it would shoot, you know, forever, right? So of course it gets dirty and jams. Let's shoot this thing. Let's shoot the a hundred thousand dollar 308 and let's see how expensive it looks when I shoot it. You tell me if you think it's worth it. So the load, this thing, you saw how it loaded that, right? Pull the trigger down, trigger guard down. It pops up and slide it in and close it, cock it, ready to shoot. Okay. This little bit more complex. You got this called the top cover right here. You hit this little lever over here on the side, opens right up and bolt is locked to the rear. And then you take the belt, put it in right here. You got to watch this when you don't. So when you have like this type of link hanging off right here, it's where, you know, it's curved there where it would have another round in it. Instead of, let's see if I have an example. Instead of like this, it can be a little bit trickier to load because what will happen is this hook will grab the inside of the feed tray right there. So try to avoid that from happening because it's kind of annoying. When it does that, it's trying to do it. There we go. Okay. So the round's sitting there just like that and close the top cover and safety is off. It is ready to go. All right. I'm going to put a couple of rounds on the big square plate down there. Okay. And then once this thing goes dry, pull this back, open her up, knock the extra links out of there. All clear. So we got, we got, I would say we definitely got a little more value out of the impact on target. I don't know if it was a hundred thousand dollars more impact on the target than the CVA, but definitely more, right? Okay. So let me kind of explain why this gun is so expensive. For those of you who don't, they don't know. Oh, first though, let me remind you about other people that make all this possible. Alabama holster make great little Kydex concealment holsters, a really, really cool holsters they make over there. And then also rent a gun. It's really interesting program that they have. I think they offer where you can rent a gun for a specific purpose that maybe you don't need all the time, right? Or maybe you want to try it out to see if it's something you do want to purchase down the road. So really cool, really organization. Okay. So this is what is called in America, a transferable machine gun, meaning that it was registered with the ATF prior to May of 1986. And I believe there are only 32, 38 States, I believe as of right now, where a civilian can legally purchase a machine gun through this process. When the registry closed, uh, no new guns can be added to it, right? So essentially you have a set supply of machine guns. There's a finite number of machine guns and the demand continues to increase as you know, more and more people want to buy them, right? They get more and more valuable because the number of them does not go up. It's, it's stationary, right? So they've been getting more and more and more valuable ever since 1986. Okay. So that is where most of the value of this gun comes from, um, is the rarity, right? A transferable machine gun in a state where it's legal to possess. Uh, they're very expensive. I mean, on the low end, Oh man. I mean, some of the cheapest ones are still, I think going for like maybe close to $10,000, you know, these days. And you know, they go up to, I mean, there's some that are worth hundreds of thousands or like, you know, maybe even closer to a million or something. Right. I mean, that it's incredibly, incredibly expensive thing to get into. Now, luckily I bought this one, you know, several years ago when it was a little bit more affordable, but still very expensive. The gun itself outside of that legal status that I'm talking about, which makes it very rare, really, it should actually cost closer to $10,000 let's say. Um, and I think if we lived in a world that, uh, unfortunately I can only dream about, but who knows, maybe we'll get it one day, a world where this is a common item that you can just go and buy over the counter at a, at a gun shop. And a lot of them are being made and a lot of parts are being made just like AR-15s and all that sort of thing. Then, you know, something like this, you know, might retail for closer to $7,000 or $8,000, right? Because even the semi-automatic ones are like a little bit rare and collectible because they don't make that many of them. Not that many people want them, you know? Um, so the real actual value would say between seven and $10,000 in a perfect world. So the $100,000 strictly comes from the legal status of this, right? Um, there's, you know, it gets kind of complicated and I'm too afraid of like saying something incorrect. So I don't want to go too far into this, but there's other classifications where like, for example, if, you know, if you're a dealer or you're a military law enforcement, uh, there are full auto M60s out there on the market that are not transferable to civilians. But if you are either, again, you're not a civilian because you're military law enforcement, or, you know, you're a dealer or something like that, then you actually can buy them for closer to like, you know, $10,000. But this one is transferable. So any, any civilian with a clean record that lives in one of the states where it's allowed, you can buy it just very expensive. Okay. Whereas the value of this being $400 is much more, you know, true to what it actually, you know, what the market, you know, the normal market requires, right. Based on what it costs to make it and the demand and all that, all that sort of thing. Um, they actually have, interestingly enough, the same length barrel. Um, you know, if you're not counting the flash chamber, uh, you know, both of these are a 20 inch barrel. Uh, this, the M60 has interchangeable barrels for obvious reasons. Uh, I don't think anyone's going to be firing this enough to overheat the barrel. Right. So not a big issue, um, with something like this, but with a machine gun, uh, I want to say that they advise that you, uh, actually change the barrel. Like if, if you fire like around 200 rounds continuously, they say you need to either wait for it to cool or change the barrel. So if you just put, you know, 200 round belts through it back to back, then you can start to do damage to the barrel. That's, that's, that's what I've been told. Some people might even do it sooner than that. I don't know. Let me show you how that works. Okay. So both locks to the rear. All right. So you got this little, um, there it is, this little doodad right here. Okay. Push this in, comes up. Let's see if it's hot enough for me to grab it right here. It's not. All right. So what it's designed to do is the bipod is supposed to kind of help you grab it, which if it's hot enough, the bipod doesn't, doesn't do much. But since I only fired, you know, whatever that was like 50 rounds, I can. So squeeze it like that, straight up. All right. Barrel comes off. And I just so happen to have another one here. Grab it down in there like that. Locks into the trunnion and then the gas tube. All right. And it's in there. Put that guy down and ready to go again with a nice cool barrel. Let's load it up and shoot it. See if I can avoid that thing I was showing you earlier. I think if you break it off. Yeah, there we go. That's something I'm sure. But any, anyone, any machine gunners watching probably laughing at me for not doing it like that. So that when you get it like this on the end, that makes it a lot easier. Instead of when it's like this, you have this little hook trying to grab the feed tray. It'll go in, but it's just annoying that way. I can just lay it on there without having to worry about that. All right. Safety on close it down. Okay. We've got a, uh, metal trash can over there. I'm going to light that thing up. Let's see what happens. We move this out of the way so dad can come around here and get a good shot of the belt going in. Part of the fun of a machine gun is watching it eat the belt. All right. Safety off. Here we go. I'm just going to lay into it. I'll tell you what. I don't know if it's $99,600 more fun than the $400 308, but it sure as hell is a lot more fun. Boy, man, machine guns are so much fun. Such a shame that these are not easier to get our hands on. Sometimes I feel guilty that I get to have this and shoot this, but, uh, you know, Hey, I'm doing my best to try to share it with you guys. And I try to get people to shoot it as often as I possibly can. That is so much fun. Um, yeah, so I can't really see any of the hits on the trash can over there, but I'm going to assume I hit it a few times at least. So I'll tell you what, let's shoot the target. I always forget to shoot the target in these videos. Let me get like a little belt here. I'll tell you what I got an idea. I'm going to shoot a few from the table. Uh, I'm gonna have to pick it up actually. So let's do it like this. So if you have too long of a belt, those of you that aren't familiar with something like this, if you have a too long of a belt and it's just hanging and you don't have a box, which I didn't bring one over here with me today, um, you can, uh, screw up the feeding mechanism because it's just like too much weight, you know, for it to function and especially if it gets swinging around. So I don't want too long of a belt if I'm going to pick it up and shoot it. So we might be okay with something like that. All right, here we go. $100,000 308. Not bad, right? All right. Stock out some two liters. I don't want to shoot the steel this close. Oh yeah. Well, there you go. So if you're one of those people that was wondering, what's the difference between a $400 308 and a $100,000 308. I hope that gets you a little closer to your, uh, to answering that question for you. Okay. I hope that was fun for you guys. Hope you learned something as always. Appreciate you guys watching the video. I'll see you next time. Oh yeah, that's better. This is a great gun for defense. Oh, Hey, didn't see you guys there. Uh, while I've got you here, I want to remind you of our friends over at Talon Grips and Ballistol. Talon Grips makes, uh, grips. Can you believe it? Uh, for all different types of firearms, you can get rough texture or more of a rubberized texture. Uh, just sticks right on there, you know, really affordable, really cool option to improve the grip for your handguns, um, or, or rifles. Uh, so please check them out at TalonGunGrips.com. You'll be glad you did. And also Ballistol. Uh, dad has been using Ballistol for many years. It's a cleaner and a lubricant and it's non-toxic. Uh, it works really great and we're happy to have them on board since it's been a part of our shooting endeavor for a very long time. So go to Ballistol.com, TalonGunGrips.com. And also while you're out there, I'm juggling all these things here. Also, uh, while you're on the internet, please do check out our other social media like Hickok45 on Facebook. There's also Hickok45 on Twitter, TheRealHickok45 on Instagram. There's a John underscore Hickok45 on Instagram where I do some things. So check out all that stuff and then watch more videos.