There are a number of inconvenient truths about guns. Truths that you don’t seem to hear our friends in the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex utter very often. For some reason.
Truths like the fact that firearms used at least 1.1 million times per year (and probably closer to twice that number) in defensive situations. Situations where they prevent violent crimes like robberies, assaults, rapes and murders. That’s many multiples of the number of people who or either injured or killed in incidents involving firearms.
And there’s the recent study by anti-gun activist Dr. Garen Wintemute, whose own research revealed that the requirement for universal background checks in California had no — zero, zilch, nada, nul — effect on the state’s homicide or suicide rates.
Also, don’t forget that the number of firearms-related homicides has plummeted to record low rates over the last quarter century, a period of time during which the number of guns in private hands in the US has soared.
It’s almost as if all the work that people like Michael Bloomberg, Shannon Watts, Ladd Everitt, Diane Feinstein and all the rest of their gun-grabbing pals have been doing for decades hasn’t had any practical results at all.
Now a recent post at reason.com is highlighting yet another inconvenient fact about the never-ending effort of the anti-gun left to relieve people of the means of armed self defense.
DIY firearms ranging in sophistication from muskets to grenade launchers exist in the millions across the planet, according to a new report that should (but won’t) finally demonstrate to government officials the futility of efforts to disarm people who insist on being free.
…(D)efiance of restrictive gun laws is far more common than compliance with them, and not just in the United States but in countries as far apart as Australia and Pakistan. People refuse to register their firearms, they modify them, they smuggle them, and they make them at home and in illegal workshops.
Apparently people all over the world are willing to do whatever they have to to ensure they have the means for armed self defense, whether that’s to protect themselves and their families from criminals or tyrannical governments. If only someone in this country had the vision and foresight to enshrine that right on our founding documents.
A technology that is already making a major difference in easing DIY gun manufacturing is the internet. “The online sharing of expertise and instructional videos is facilitating the craft production of increasingly sophisticated weapons, including sub-machine guns and anti-materiel rifles,” the authors write. But you don’t need to take their word for it; instead, you should check out Reason‘s handy-dandy guide to making your own off-the-books handgun. Video instructions are included.
Click here to view Reason’s handy-dandy guide to building your own GLOCK 17 at home.
Of course, it’s always been legal to make your own firearms in the US and still is, though a few states have enacted mandatory serialization (read: registration) laws. How many people in those states do you think actually comply with those requirements?
As Reason points out and their video makes clear, though, you don’t need a 3D printer to make your own guns at home. Just about anyone can do it. But if you have a 3D printer, you can get plans for your very own guns right here.
Of course, none of these inconvenient facts are likely to slow the gun-grabbers’ roll. It’s never really been about reducing “gun violence” or “common sense gun safety” for them, the object has always been control. Which means, depending on the uncertainties of politics, we may have still more restrictions on what we can own and carry in our future. But if the results of this study are any indicator, that won’t stop people here or anywhere else around the world from thumbing their noses at those who would disarm them.
“Regardless of how they are made,” the authors conclude, “improvised and craft-produced weapons … will continue to pose global challenges to law enforcement and policy-makers.” Some of us might say that, in a world inhabited by people who view the governments that would disarm them with well-earned distrust, that’s exactly how it should be.
No argument here.
