🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct12.011304.286@kentrox.uucp> bud@kentrox.uucp (Bud Couch) writes:
[...]
>You don't really need to show that any other countries will manufacture firearms.
>The manufacture of a quite accurate and servicable firearm is a piece of cake to 
>any jackleg machinist with access to a metal lathe. (BTW, _ANY_ decent automotive
>machine shop has all the tools needed.) And with the level of profit to be made,
>the need *will* be filled. Remember bathtub gin? 
>
>The mistaken belief that it requires a huge technological base to make guns is
>a consequence of the failures of our education system. Remember Clarke's Law,
>"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistguishable from magic"? In an 
>otherwise educated forum such as the net, it's MNSHO that we've produced a 
>surplus of software weenies. :-)

Well, if I were running one of these gun buy-back programs, I'd modify
the final step, destroying the accumulated weapons, to *sabotaging* said
weapons, then, reinserting them back into the black market.  Note that
people who acquired their weapons through non-black-market channels would
be unaffected; the latter can afford to have their weapons tested by a
gunsmith anyway.  This way, a black-market weapon stands a pretty good
chance of damaging the user when the trigger is pulled.  Over a period of
time, could the proportion of sabotaged or bogus weapons out there rise
to as high as 10 percent?  Would that change the incidence of violent crime?
Or would that have any impact at all on a pool of people, most of whom,
have nothing to lose anyway?  Would there be a shift to other kinds of weapons?
If more knives were used, say, rather than guns, I'd reluctantly have to
count that as a gain of some kind.

I know that if somebody were pointing a weapon at me, and it went off,
I'r rather take my chances with shrapnel rather than a correctly aimed
bullet.  If I survive that, and the assailant is standing (or laying)
there with a shattered hand or worse, I can just walk (or more likely, totter)
away, which is a better outcome than if the weapon had functioned correctly.

Such an operation would certainly have to be sub rosa, perhaps maintained
by a clandestine group of "hobbyists" who get their jollies from seeing
people hoist by their own petard :) .  The fact that no huge technological
base is required makes the project reachable and doable by anybody whose
mindwarps extend in that particular direction... :)
-- 
kurt@grogatch.celestial.com (Kurt Cockrum)
 Nostalgic conservatives will soon be referring to the Bush Era as
 "those Halcion days of yesteryear".