The Thompson submachine gun was a fully automatic piece of work whose extensive use by gangsters during Prohibition, and mobsters subsequently, led to a federal ban on automatic guns about 1936. The law has been in force ever since.
Which you might not know if you watch the Rube Tube. Its supposedly sophisticated commentators often contend that automatic guns are freely available. When corrected they turn (somehow) to the notion that semiautomatic guns are just as bad. Which may be why some of our more dimwitted politicos are out to ban semiautomatic weapons.
Nothing about semiautos, however, equals the firehose effect of a one-trigger-pull full auto. Especially not a Tommy gun, with or without a concealing fiddle case. Rat-a-tat-tat.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
Only ever shot one once. Could not get over how tiny it was. And very little control, once the rounds started pouring out of it.
Not like my M-60 at all. Which is one of the most beautiful weapons I ever fired. Way better than the 50 cal, simply because it can be carried and fired by one person.
Had to be small to fit into a violin case. Never even held a Tommy. I agree about the 60, though it was heavy. You do realize it’s an antique now, every bit as much as the Tommy gun?
We had a 50 mounted on a pedestal in the back of one of our jeeps. Firing it more than a little snapped the welds on the base of the pedestal. I used to look at that thing and try to imagine it and a few others mounted on a WW2 bomber or in the wings of a fighter.
Never held one, but it looks like something one would use for close work, like Uzi.
And re M-60: beg your pardon, but FN-MAG, what you call M240, I guess, is so much better, it doesn’t compare. Oh well, I am not planning to use either anymore.
I’ve seen the 240 but never held or fired one. The 60 was a bear to lug around, even with the integral handle provided (I only had to do it in training, never in the field)—not to mention the extra barrel and the asbestos mitt to use to change barrels and the linked belts and so on and so forth. Yes, mercifully, those days are over.