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Originally Posted by MaggieL
I also think you're vastly underestimating how difficult it is to make a gun; it certainly doesn't require "a factory", nor are they terribly difficult to smuggle. In fact, this debate was done here once before, with Jaguar in the role of "gun prohibition does work, no, really".
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Yes, I'm aware that there are hobbyists who make guns in their basements.
My point is that there are no criminals who make guns. Criminals are mostly stupid and lazy, and they don't have the discipline to make anything. If they could make a gun, they would have a skill and a temperment that would allow them to lead a law abiding life. It's a numbers game. Criminals need the law abiding populace to have a large number of guns, so they can steal a subset of them.
It may be easy to smuggle one or two guns, sure. But the number of guns in use by criminals today to commit crimes is astronomical. It's too many to smuggle easily. Dope can be stuffed into teddy bears and vases and fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars. A gun can be smuggled for what, maybe as much as grand? It's too difficult, and the economics that would drive the smuggling are just not there. Criminals don't invest in tooling to commit crimes. They get a stolen gun for $50 and rob somebody and toss the gun. Again, it's a numbers game.
I'm not arguing in favor of banning guns. I just don't buy the lie that banning guns won't reduce the number of guns available for criminals. That's a crock.