You can own a tank if you want to, but theres a lot of laws around making it street legal, depending on the tank's weight.

What if I just want a little joy ride through San Diego as a treat?

And also the answer is easy, yes. Then, now, tomorrow, yes you can just buy any gun anywhere you want at any time. To be clear, I am American. Living in Amerikkka. Before posting this I went into my local Starbucks and bought a mortar launcher and a semi automatic pistol. After that I went over to fed ex and printed 3 luigi pistols in 4 different colors.

Could you just imagine the suppression people face in other countries? Calling them colours or whatever it is in the metic system.

In 1984, a full auto would still have been on an NFA registry. Open, rather than closed like today, but still not a simple one step sale.

This is of course, fact checking the finer points of gun law in a movie about a time traveling robot.

Damn not very 1984 of them

Part of the plot was that Skynet didn't have great records. The terminator had to use a phone book and go down the line killing Sarah Conners because it didn't know which one was the target

There was a ban on selling machine guns to civilians that was passed in 1986.

The original Terminator film came out in 1984. So now? Yes, but then?

Probably accurate.

There are still transferrable Mac 10s out there though

"Hey wait a minute. Those haven't been invented yet. What are you? Some kind of time traveling killer robot with incomplete historical records. Hang on just one second pal, I gotta go to the back."

American Police: "Want to buy some guns? Go right ahead."

Also American Police: "Withdrawing more than $10,000 in cash to pay for it? Get'm boys!"

the large quantity of guns and ammo would raise suspicion.

iirc there a law where more than 1,000 rounds in one purchase would have a federal note that someone bought a lot of ammo, so people just started buying 999 bullets instead lmao

That depends heavily on where you are in the country.

In fairness you could probably just walk out with it if you do what Arnie does in the movie...

Modern day, sure no problem. Today's micro red dots can be mounted to the moving slides themselves and survive.

In the 1980s? Maaaybe...

The laser in the movie is mounted to the frame by way of the grip, so it will shake around much less than if it were on the slide. Mounting optics to the frame is how competition guns were (and sometimes still are) set up.

The question comes down to the durability of a laser device made in the 80s. The movie's laser was a specially made prop. On one hand it was made by the precursor to Surefire which is known for quality equipment, on the other hand I doubt the movie cared about it actually holding a zero.