Gun question - What should I get?

[Darth Wong]

What the fuck kind of tautology is this? It's illegal therefore it can't be policed? No, it's illegal therefore it is not currently being policed well enough. It does not mean it is IMPOSSIBLE to police.

It does mean that's it's damned difficult to police. And it's not like you can just have gun sniffing dogs trying to find them.

No, machine shops are well known to be so difficult to spot from the street that you would need dogs to sniff them out

Even shitty guns and ammo still require manufacturing facilities, and it's hard to set up manufacturing facilities if illegal firearms and ammo are being heavily policed. If America went after the firearms black market with half the fervour they reserved for drugs, why wouldn't it be affected?

You know, I could make a handgun frame using just a machine shop. A CNC milling machine would be nice, but not necessary. I suppose you're going to have every machine tool in the US be regulated?

You don't need to regulate beakers in order to make crack production facilities illegal, do you? Stop exaggerating. Machine tools are expensive, and require constant supplies of parts and tooling. Professional equipment, which you would need for anything remotely resembling actual production, is sold through licensed dealers, not Wal-Mart. They could easily report violations, particularly if there were standing rewards for doing so. I don't see why you need to pretend that it's simply impossible to do ANYTHING about the gun black market.

[MKSheppard]

Professional equipment, which you would need for anything remotely resembling actual production, is sold through licensed dealers, not Wal-Mart. They could easily report violations, particularly if there were standing rewards for doing so. I don't see why you need to pretend that it's simply impossible to do ANYTHING about the gun black market.

Cheap, POS, yet somewhat effective, the Sten Gun. Made on
Cheap POS tooling

[Darth Wong]

Cheap, POS, yet somewhat effective, the Sten Gun. Made on Cheap POS tooling

Really! Please, show me a place where you can buy steel stamping presses and tooling without having to spend a considerable amount of money, not to mention working with manufacturers who generally sell through licensed dealers.

[Beowulf]

What the fuck kind of tautology is this? It's illegal therefore it can't be policed? No, it's illegal therefore it is not currently being policed well enough. It does not mean it is IMPOSSIBLE to police.

It does mean that's it's damned difficult to police. And it's not like you can just have gun sniffing dogs trying to find them.

No, machine shops are well known to be so difficult to spot from the street that you would need dogs to sniff them out

Even shitty guns and ammo still require manufacturing facilities, and it's hard to set up manufacturing facilities if illegal firearms and ammo are being heavily policed. If America went after the firearms black market with half the fervour they reserved for drugs, why wouldn't it be affected?

You know, I could make a handgun frame using just a machine shop. A CNC milling machine would be nice, but not necessary. I suppose you're going to have every machine tool in the US be regulated?

You don't need to regulate beakers in order to make crack production facilities illegal, do you? Stop exaggerating. Machine tools are expensive, and require constant supplies of parts and tooling. Professional equipment, which you would need for anything remotely resembling actual production, is sold through licensed dealers, not Wal-Mart. They could easily report violations, particularly if there were standing rewards for doing so. I don't see why you need to pretend that it's simply impossible to do ANYTHING about the gun black market.

Picture these scenarios:
Guns made in Mexico, and shipped up hidden in cars. No way to tell they are there. No smell, the car's made of metal already.

Guy works at a machine shop by day. Stays after shop closes to finish up some pieces for a customer. Then works on making some cheap frames for handgun. Then sells it on black market for enormous markup.

I will note at this point that in some countries, gun manufacturing is a cottage industry.

[Nathan F]

An example of this is the Japanese rifle that was produced as a last ditch weapon at the end of WW2. It had very rough sites, rough welds, and was generally a POS. It was also built in the back yards of houses by school girls...

[Darth Wong]

Picture these scenarios:

Guns made in Mexico, and shipped up hidden in cars. No way to tell they are there. No smell, the car's made of metal already.

Who needs smell? A trunkload of guns is not as easy to conceal as tiny bags of cocaine, and the risk/cost/benefit ratios for the smuggler are nowhere near as good. We're talking about bulky, heavy equipment. You could probably use various magnetism-based sensors to determine that a car's trunk has a lot more metal in it than usual.

Guy works at a machine shop by day. Stays after shop closes to finish up some pieces for a customer. Then works on making some cheap frames for handgun. Then sells it on black market for enormous markup.

Oh yeah, as if you're going to get high-volume production out of that. If isolated activity like that was the entirety of the black market, it would be a big improvement already.

I will note at this point that in some countries, gun manufacturing is a cottage industry.

So's cocaine manufacturing. Doesn't mean it's impossible to stop or that we shouldn't bother trying. And we can outright ban homemade guns; no responsible person will want to own one, and it's a perfectly legitimate public safety concern, even if some of the extreme right-wingers will cry foul.

[Beowulf]

Who needs smell? A trunkload of guns is not as easy to conceal as tiny bags of cocaine, and the risk/cost/benefit ratios for the smuggler are nowhere near as good. We're talking about bulky, heavy equipment. You could probably use various magnetism-based sensors to determine that a car's trunk has a lot more metal in it than usual.

You don't think a bunch of hand gun parts would be easy to conceal all over a car? Think about the fact that a car is mostly steel. Duct tape pieces near the frame. Easy, no? Also note the fact that a simple hand gun doesn't necessarily need to have alot of steel.

Oh yeah, as if you're going to get high-volume production out of that. If isolated activity like that was the entirety of the black market, it would be a big improvement already.

Simple single shot zip guns can be made of a piece of steel tubing, and some pieces from a hardware store. You're positing more difficulty to making a gun than is necessary.

So's cocaine manufacturing. Doesn't mean it's impossible to stop or that we shouldn't bother trying. And we can outright ban homemade guns; no responsible person will want to own one, and it's a perfectly legitimate public safety concern, even if some of the extreme right-wingers will cry foul.

In case you didn't notice, they're already illegal. Doesn't mean zip guns aren't used.

[Nathan F]

It IS illegal to produce guns without the proper licensing, if I am not mistaken, as well as highly dangerous.

And it wouldn't be hard to hide a stash of firearms in a car. Not that hard to create secret compartments that are nearly undetectable.

[MKSheppard]

Really! Please, show me a place where you can buy steel stamping presses and tooling without having to spend a considerable amount of money, not to mention working with manufacturers who generally sell through licensed dealers.

The Sten gun could easily be reverse-engineered with some thought
to use conventional piping of the kind used in hardware stores, and
surplus rifle barrels from old rifles...

It doesn't have to look pretty, it just has to go bang.

[Darth Wong]

Who needs smell? A trunkload of guns is not as easy to conceal as tiny bags of cocaine, and the risk/cost/benefit ratios for the smuggler are nowhere near as good. We're talking about bulky, heavy equipment. You could probably use various magnetism-based sensors to determine that a car's trunk has a lot more metal in it than usual.

You don't think a bunch of hand gun parts would be easy to conceal all over a car? Think about the fact that a car is mostly steel. Duct tape pieces near the frame. Easy, no? Also note the fact that a simple hand gun doesn't necessarily need to have alot of steel.

Smuggling one handgun is easy. Smuggling a trunkload is not. And I doubt it would be worthwhile to smuggle just one or two or even a half-dozen handguns at a time. Risk/cost/benefit ratio, remember?

Simple single shot zip guns can be made of a piece of steel tubing, and some pieces from a hardware store. You're positing more difficulty to making a gun than is necessary.

And you are claiming that this would become widespread in the event that guns are not common, despite the uselessness and potential danger of these weapons to their own users. Please present evidence; it's not as if nations which tightly regulate gun traffic are awash in these boogeymen of yours.

[Nathan F]

hehe, this thread has gone from advice on guns, to gun control, to the plausability of home made guns being used by criminals...

Truly odd how some things work...

[MKSheppard]

Smuggling one handgun is easy. Smuggling a trunkload is not. And I doubt it would be worthwhile to smuggle just one or two or even a half-dozen handguns at a time. Risk/cost/benefit ratio, remember?

Funny you should say this. When I was in jail, I met this kid, a 20+ year
old who made lots and lots of money by smuggling hundreds of
handguns each trip from Virginia into New York City in the trunk of his
car. He eventually DID get busted during a stop, but he had made a
LOT of trips before that...

[Beowulf]

Small, lightweight

And you know the risk/cost/benefit ratio how? And zip guns are used in the inner cities today. A gang member may prefer to have an automatic, but a gun's a gun.

EDIT: another page of pics on the liberator pistol: http://home.pacbell.net/rlhag65/pictures.htm

[Darth Wong]

Smuggling one handgun is easy. Smuggling a trunkload is not. And I doubt it would be worthwhile to smuggle just one or two or even a half-dozen handguns at a time. Risk/cost/benefit ratio, remember?

Funny you should say this. When I was in jail, I met this kid, a 20+ year
old who made lots and lots of money by smuggling hundreds of
handguns each trip from Virginia into New York City in the trunk of his
car. He eventually DID get busted during a stop, but he had made a
LOT of trips before that...

Perhaps you were sleeping during the part where I said that if the government put MORE effort into catching these kinds of smugglers, it would cut down on this bullshit.

[Beowulf]

Perhaps you were sleeping during the part where I said that if the government put MORE effort into catching these kinds of smugglers, it would cut down on this bullshit.

And how the hell are you going to do that? It's not like you can put gun sniffing dogs on patrol. Anything you try is going to have to deal with the immense amount of traffic highways get. If there is a market, someone's going to try to fill it.

[MKSheppard]

Perhaps you were sleeping during the part where I said that if the government put MORE effort into catching these kinds of smugglers, it would cut down on this bullshit.

Hey, genius, how are you going to tell the cars on the freeway apart?
How are you going to differentate between the guy who has a TV set
in his trunk and a guy who's smuggling hundreds of handguns in his
trunk?

You can't, unless you institute random stops and searches, which
would piss a lot of people off, and would be totally unconstitutional.

[Beowulf]

Oooooohh...

Interesting link I found:
http://www.saf.org/journal/3_Chandler.html

And could a mod please split off the gun control debate?

[Coyote]

When you distort "license guns" to "make guns illegal", you commit a tired strawman distortion. You do this every fucking time, and I'm getting a little tired of it.

But it is not a strawman, it is rooted in truth. There are many areas in the US where guns are outlawed and tigth gun control schemes are implemented. New York, Washington DC, and other spots. In each and every single one of these areas where gun liscencing was enacted for "safety" purposes, the registration lists were used to implement a round-up and confiscation of guns. It happened in Hawaii, and California with the SKS, and the eastern cities.

Registration lists in the US have always been used for confiscation. That is why no gun owner in the US trusts any promise to register for "safety" and "crime tracking" purposes.

[Coyote]

Because that's what happens if you license them. Just go look at New York City...Licensed guns in the 60s, and then took them away a few decades later

Predictable slippery-slope fallacy. Canada has had gun licensing in one form or another for decades. We still have 7 million fucking legally owned guns in the country.

But in this case, the "slippery-slope" has been demonstrated by physical action to be a real, actual thing. The policies of Canadian registry are not an accurate gauge of American registry.

You are correct, Mike, in that a lot of crime problems (crime being the problem, the use of guns in crime being a manifestation of that problem) we ahve a economically disaffected, frustrated, and desperate inner city where much of this takes place-- in that we do need to revamp some of our welfare concepts but many people fear being "taxed to death" to support lazy slobs who want to sit around and make herds of unschoolable children. Real or not, that is the fear.

[Coyote]

Mike, during the Israeli 1948 war, dozens of illegal gun factories were set up in basements and caves. Using cheap, common metal-shop machine tools they created mass amounts of Sten guns right under the noses of the British military.

Many of the guns didn't work well, some just fired a few shots before jamming, but that was all you needed to grab the dead guy's rifle and continue the fight. It happened time and again, especially on the supply road to Jerusalem, where Arab attackers fought it out with Jewish militia armed with homemade Stens.

These Sten guns were buried in arms caches around Israel, and sometimes they are dug up by construction crews (by now fairly rusty and ill-suited to use) and end up as museum pieces.

It would be so much easier to set up factories like this in modern America.

[EmperorChrostas the Cruel]

Food for thought.
There is a man, facing jail time now, in New Jersey, (or is it New York?) for shooting an intruder in his own house, with an unlicensed gun.

Licensing can be made so difficult, it BECOMES defacto prohibition.

Then, there is the "retro legalese". You know, when the weapon you registered last year is banned. (SKS, AR-15, Tech-9, in California)
LAST year, you were a law abiding citizen, now you are a felon waiting to happen, provided you don't throw away an expencive piece of machinery without compensation.

[Coyote]

BTW: in re: Conversion kits for semi-auto firearms....

You cannot buy them legally anymore unless you have a class-III liscence that allows you to own and purchase full-auto weapons. These liscences are very rare. And, if you have the liscence, it is better to buy a weapon designed for full-auto in the first place rather than converting a semi-.

There are conversion kits that allow you to rig your weapon to either fire triple-bursts or to crank them like a Gatling gun and make them fire rapidly, but they frequently do not work and result in damage to the gun.

I have also heard-- but cannot provide documentation for-- that weapons sold to civilians that are semi-automatic (one bullet per trigger squeeze, not machinegun style) these days are usually made with semi-auto fire in mind only; the twist of the rifling and the construction of the weapon itself will not support full-auto firing without damaging the weapon irreparably. If anyone else has heard of this and has further information, I and others might like ot hear about it...(??)

[Beowulf]

I have also heard-- but cannot provide documentation for-- that weapons sold to civilians that are semi-automatic (one bullet per trigger squeeze, not machinegun style) these days are usually made with semi-auto fire in mind only; the twist of the rifling and the construction of the weapon itself will not support full-auto firing without damaging the weapon irreparably. If anyone else has heard of this and has further information, I and others might like ot hear about it...(??)

I believe that the receiver is constructed such that you'd have to modify it to put in the full-automatic trigger group. And of course that, would make it impossible to return it to semi auto firing.

[Nathan F]

I have also heard-- but cannot provide documentation for-- that weapons sold to civilians that are semi-automatic (one bullet per trigger squeeze, not machinegun style) these days are usually made with semi-auto fire in mind only; the twist of the rifling and the construction of the weapon itself will not support full-auto firing without damaging the weapon irreparably. If anyone else has heard of this and has further information, I and others might like ot hear about it...(??)

I believe that the receiver is constructed such that you'd have to modify it to put in the full-automatic trigger group. And of course that, would make it impossible to return it to semi auto firing.

Yep, all civilian firearms sold today are specifically designed NOT to fire full auto.

To get a civilian AR-15 (civvie M-16) to fire full auto, you would have to get a completely new lower unit and bolt. Not an easy task.

[Beowulf]

To get a civilian AR-15 (civvie M-16) to fire full auto, you would have to get a completely new lower unit and bolt. Not an easy task.

Especially when you consider the fact that you need the class III license to get the new lower receiver...

I didn't know about the bolt though. And of course, you need the new trigger group.