“Most of our gunsmiths are farmers who go into the business of making guns because of poverty. They use the money to feed their families. Instead of judging them, we pity them.” – Danao Councilor Jose Thaddeus Roble in Farmers Copying Guns at Home Make Philippines Deadlier than U.S. [at businessweek.com]
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say the Philippines is more deadly than US despite farmers turned gunsmiths… You know, that whole Third World hellhole thing…
The PI has corruption, a weak central .gov and a muslim insurgency. So yeah, pretty much a 3rd world hellhole.
An MP buddy of mine was going to marry some girl he met from PI. Not met a Filipino girl in the US, but going to marry a Filipino girl in the Philippines. You know, one of those deals…
Anyways, when he would come home from his quarterly PI nookie visits, the weird stories he would have were almost unbelievable.
That’s a strange place.
My wife is Filipino. I married her in Cebu City 25 years ago, & yes were still married
Based on my experience you would be the exception not the rule. I mean no offense, I’m just calling it the way I saw it.
Rock on,
No offense taken, I realize that many of these marriages do not “take”. I’m surprised this one has lasted so long, considering out age difference.
10 cent a bottle San Miguel beer. In the day a lot of my buddies married Fillipino girls, Vietnamese girls, Cambodians and Thais. They got dutiful wives that were at their beck and call as opposed to the libbers back in the world.
Then they brought those girls home and the local girls and cosmo got ahold of them. Most of those marrieges didn’t last as long as my hitch.
The PI wasa great place for a young american to let off a little steam and do an R&R. No way would I live there.
And don’t forget MILF. Stop giggling! That is actually the initials of their little club of muslim murderer rapists.
Yep, you’re not kidding:
Moro Islamic Liberation Front signed a treaty with the government last winter.
And broke it before the guy even lifted pen from paper. They are quite cross with people actually using those initials and have said they are going to sue in EU courts over it.
FYI – it’s a Bloomberg article, so the guns are to blame for the violence.
If it weren’t for those guns the peasants could wither away to nothing in peace.
Yea, farmers making guns is a non-starter. Philippines is deadlier than US because of muslim and communist insurgencies, not home made guns from farmers. Now, the stats on people injured by said home made guns is another matter entirely!
Of course the state is encouraging them to go legitimate.
That way they run the risk of committing any number of bureaucratic paperwork crimes and the state will know right where you are and exactly who did what and you get to pay the taxes that fund your own imprisonment.
Do yourselves a favor and stay in your garages.
Remove restrictions on gun ownership and let these guys make as many as they can. Let them sell them for what they can and tell the government to f off.
The problem is corruption and poverty. Get rid of the corruption and the rest will take care of itself.
Homemade revolver……props my friend, especially with your crude collection of tools there. I guess he does Para Ord 1911’s and Uzis in addition to the S &W knockoffs. Nice job Lito. Maybe in the next life you’ll upgrade to a CNC mill or at least a 3D printer or something
I have spent some time in the Philippines over the past 18 years (got married there) and I am constantly amazed at the things that very poor people with little resources are able to do. There are little “cottage industries” all over the place located under tarps in back yards building cars, trucks, commercial machinery, so why not guns? My Filipino grandfather-in-law made stunningly beautiful carved doors using nothing but a sharpened screw driver and a utility knife.
As to the violence, they have a massive corruption problem from local government to the national level. Add in the Muslim separatists, the Marxists, rampant poverty and the tribal rivalry that comes from being a nation of hundreds of islands, and you have a very difficult situation to solve, and gun control alone won’t even touch the problem. But it is not like being in Afghanistan, or Iraq. I plan on retiring there, and as a 6′-3″ tall blue eyed American, I do NOT blend in with the general population, and yet I feel safe in most places, except maybe the island of Mindanao. I’ve been to Mindanao, but the folks I was visiting were very careful about arranging my transportation from the airport.
I have been disappointed by sites like weaponsguild because they seem to shy away from revolvers. If it’s not a parts kit it’s bolt action or a blowback 9mm tube gun. Pistols are easy, I’m always hoping to see a classy revolver build from scratch to demonstrate some real ingenuity.
My Rock Island 1911 GI is quite good quality for the $. Philippines learned alot after WWII.
Maybe they’re stumping for a job with Armscor.
Violence! Because guns!
(small print: also there’s the little problem of this muslim insurgency thing… but y’know GUNS! GUNS MADE THEM BAD!!! Wait not bad. Just violent.)
I spent a 10 day vacation in the Philippines once. It is quite possibly the most fun country in the world.
Nice try bloomberg and amnesty international. Plus points for using UN data. We know what you did there!
What is wrong with a garage gun? The gov should leave them alone and let them make whatever they want. Prosecute criminals – not machinists.
What is wrong with a garage gun? Why go after these “illegal” gunsmiths and not criminals?
Because the criminals are no threat to the politicians running(ruining) the Philippines. “illegal” guns could be supplied to potential revolutionaries, who could call the politicians into accounting.
How about this for a “quote of the day”, from the same article: “Gun control laws and economic growth…have failed to put a major dent in crime.” Maybe somebody ought to be looking at something else as a cause, huh?
Ah, the Philippines: the country of my ancestors…some of their practices when it comes to firearms are questionable at best.
I woke up one morning to a guy shooting a .45 outside of the house i was staying in. Scared the crap out of me. I looked out the window and he was just using the tree outside for target practice. It was just some random guy walking, not a family member or part of that little township. Again, their firearms handling was questionable.
The Imperial Army taught them that, perhaps you should take that issue up with Japan. I know the citizens of the Philippines would like to, except America keeps standing on the chain wrapped around their throats. Not so much with Japan. Hmmmm, wonder why?
I wonder if any of those homemade guns are as good as the 80% lowers I used to have before the tragic boating accident.
I think you mean the aluminum paper weights you lost in the boating accident. I’ve never heard of anything called an 80% lower.
What makes me sad is you people are still obsessed with the sad a$$ed product that was derived from Mr Stoner’s excellent design. It actually makes me tear up, the amount of money you piss away on such a piece of inadequate sh*t. Really rather sad, when there are real firearms out there that are far superior and way cheaper.
The article had so much nonsense in it besides the not at all veiled gun control propaganda.
“Lito, who will sell the pistol that took him a month to make for 6,000 pesos ($133) — about three-quarters of the monthly minimum wage…”
Minimum wage is only for permanent employees. Philippines based businesses get around paying minimum wage by mostly hiring people on 6 month contracts. The article makes it sounds the gunsmith is being screwed, but most people over there only make 4,000 pesos a month.
“While neighbors shooting each other is largely unheard of in Danao the firearms — sold to middlemen for as little as 650 pesos each — create problems elsewhere. In the southern province of Mindanao, a four-decade Muslim insurgency has killed as many as 200,000 people.”
The politicians support the Muslim insurgency as a way to to keep the Filipinos minds off the incredible corruption the politicians are guilty of. That is idea is not some conspiracy theory; that fact came during the indictment of Leland Ye, the California legislator.
Some of my friends who have married Filipino women, as I, are planning to retire there. A couple have even built houses they plan moving into.
But, There is a real problem there they do not seem to take seriously. There medical system is third world at best. I’m guessing their medical equipment is what we were using in the 50’s and 60’s. If you need decent medical treatment, you must travel to larger cities (far and few between).
That alone, plus the corruption would keep me from ever wanting to retire there.
You are right about the medical care. But there is another way to look at it. Folks there don’t linger for years in very poor health, unable to take care of themselves in nursing homes like here in the USA. What generally happens is if you are old, you eventually get sick, your family takes care of you to the best of their ability and then you die. For me, having watched what “modern” medicine did to my mom fighting cancer, and my grandmother who had dementia, I think I’d rather die sooner in less pain, and less sadness for my family. But that is my choice, your mileage may vary.
This whole thing, illegal gunsmiths, is the giant, gaping hole in the pro gun control argument. In spite of it being illegal, in spite of draconian punishments for making guns(up to 40 years the article said), guns are being made in spite of strong efforts to the contrary. Mexico, the cartels simply buy the weapons on the black market in spite of gun control.
YOU CANNOT STOP THE FLOW OF GUNS, GUN CONTROL ADVOCATES!
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