Making guns illegal wouldn't change a thing

reply to post by Hopechest


There are machine shops in every town that can easily make guns and would. Machine shop equipment can be put in garages and guns made as a hobby. The practice would take off like bathtub gin did during prohibition. Half the country would have a criminal record and mafia style organizations would pop up across the country.

from a t-shirt, "if they outlaw catapults, only outlaws will have catapults".

all the making of guns illegal will achieve is to take the guns out of the hands of legal owners, it will do nothing to take them away from the criminals. thus it will really NOT cut gun violence, since it is typically the criminals that commit the gun violence not the legal gun owners.

as for guns breaking, and wearing out lessening the number of guns. NOPE they will just get more. either by importing, theft (off police and military if needed), or build them. it would be like prohibition and the war on drugs, just another cash cow for criminal enterprise to cash in from. there is a saying "where there is a will there is a way", look at Ontario for example, handguns have been pretty hard to come by legally for years, yet the criminal element still has plenty of them. growing up there as a kid i knew that if i really wanted a handgun i would be able to get one fairly easily.

all removing guns from legal owners would achieve is to shift the power balance more in favor of the criminals, who would KNOW they only need to fear other criminals, the average joe becomes easy pickings. i can actually see MORE gun crime as a result of a "gun ban" as at that point just the threat of the gun would be enough to get them what they want since only other criminals would be armed.

if by some miracle they were able to get every gun. then people would just use other methods to harm and kill. so yes at that point "gun crime and violence" WOULD drop, yet violent crime would STILL be happening and still increasing, it would just see different weapons used. in all honesty i would RATHER BE SHOT, then say stabbed or hacked up. any weapon can kill you, but at least with a bullet if it doesn't kill you generally you will heal pretty well, unlike say getting your arm hacked off, or muscles completely severed. not to mention of course that if the knife were to become the primary weapon used in crime, then poisoning blades would soon follow so that even a cut could be deadly. want a distance weapon without guns? then bows, crossbows, throwing knives, throwing stars, and even semi-automatic crossbows etc would suffice and yet again poison would easily be used to make even a minor wound deadly.i think i prefer the gun over that.

getting rid of guns would change NOTHING, guns are just tools, easy tools to use to be sure, but not the be all and end all weapon people seem to think. i just don't understand how people can be so naive to think that if we get rid of guns that all the problems will just simply go away.