re bill blame america first clinton strikes again in article news duke edu eyc acpub duke edu emil chuck writes this argument sounds very stupid if the ability to make guns from simple metalworking was easy then drug dealers would make their own wouldn t they they do according the the los angeles police department illegal manufacture is one the three primary sources of machine guns and submachine guns used in crimes sumggling and theft from the police and military being the other two washington d c police have stated that if i m remembering the figure correctly of the guns they conficate were illegally built why spend hundreds of dollars buying a gun that somebody else made cheap and is selling it to you at an exorbitant markup it takes about hours and a few tools to make one at least one of reasonable quality unless the drug dealer enjoyes messing around on a lathe say as a hobby he s going to have to pay someone anyway materials plus six hours of a machinist s time for something legal would run about the blackmarket prices for guns are usually in the to range at least those few i ve seen cited in newspaper articles were the simple truth of the matter is that regardless of how easy it is to make guns banning guns will reduce the the number of new guns and seriuosly impede the efforts of a killer intent on buying a weapon washington d c has a total ban on handguns and prohibits assembled rifles within city limits it s homicide rate is almost ten times the national average it is also illegal for a d c resident to drive to the virginia or maryland suburbs and buy a gun dealers are required by federal law to check ids and make sure the buyer isn t from another state so the ban can not be easily side stepped to show why the tools argument is the silliest i have ever seen take an analogy from computer science almost every computer science major can write a wordprocessor yet we comp sci majors would willingly pay to bucks for a professional software like wordperfect why don t we just all write our own software because it is highly inconvinient sure but it you couldn t buy one you would write your own in fact people did write their own years ago more likely you would find a friend who was a particularly good programer and get him give you a copy of his software is a very bad example for your case how many people do you know with illegal copies of word processors if people want something and it isn t available or affordable legally they will usually get it illegally same with guns quite secondly how does one get this gunpowder for the home made gun the formula has been around for half a million years or are you going to restrict sales of sulpher charcoal and saltpeter that s alot cruder than modern smokless powder but it works very well the only real problems are a reduction in energy so a magnum would only be as deadly as a mm and it makes alot more smoke of course a smart black marketeer could just make the gun in mm and steal the ammunition from the police the police are often corruptable and things are known to disappear from police evidence rooms and armories and reappear on the streets if guns were really that simple to make the bosnian muslims would be very happy people or is it the case that metalworking tools are banned in bosnia deep sarcasm perhaps you weren t watching the news two years ago but the serbs also tried to invade slovinia they were driven out after a few weeks by partisans armed with home made anti tank weapons the afghan rebels frequently made their own rifles frank crary cu boulder
