Why Gun Control Can Never Work

Even if it is a good idea (it's not) and the reason is pictured below: Let me back up a minute. The photo above, entitled "Woman worker poses with finished Sten submachinegun, Small Arms Plant, Long Branch, Ontario, Canada, 1942."
The Sten is the classic example of how low-tech guns can be. This was a weapon produced in huge numbers (over a million) for the troops as well the French Resistance.
When all the R&D work was finished, they sold for approximately $3.50 and took a whopping five man-hours to build, start to finish. Today, any half-competent machinist could crank these things out at a rate of one or two per weekend.
More Sten pics in a bit. Let's get back to "the photo below":

What you're looking at is a homemade, single shot, break-open, 12 guage shotgun. No glamor queen by any means - and, obviously, absolutely no fun to shoot. It's safe to assume, however that anyone standing in front of it - within fifteen feet or so - would have his entire day ruined after this monster went off and left you unable to write or hold a spoon for a week or so.
My point: This thing is crude. It's nothing but plumbing parts and off-the-shelf hardware, welded together. It was cocked by pulling back the plunger. The little knob at the top was the "trigger" so I assume this was a two-handed weapon. Christ, I'd put in the bench-vise rather than hold it.
Crude though it was, it as well as other homegrown weaponry served the EOKA (Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston - National Organization of Cypriot Fighters) well during the "troubles" in Cyprus between 1955 and 1959.
So, guns don't have to be sophisticated to be effective. They do however have to be so to be sexy, but that's a different argument.
Back to the Sten. My favorite picture of a Sten in action:

This photo is so precious. I trot it out to shut-up French bashers every chance I get. Notice the dapper French partisan standing by the car wih his Sten while the American LT is is obviously hiding behind him. I love it. By the way, the young butter-bar's mug graces the section on the 1911, on the new and far more annoying website of the Springfield Armory. They cropped out the Froggie though.
Okay, enough of my bad attitude: I got this next from the same place I got the SMLE "sniper" pic in the column to the left (right below the "Impeach Cheney" button.

So, the gunmaking genie's out of the bottle.
What's better yet, the other day I discovered this website. This guy may be a new hero of mine. He went to prison for four years in the defense of gun ownership - in Britian no less - where they don't have the 2nd amendment to fall back on (Once a barrister friend told me "You know someone's argument is in trouble when they start invoking the constitution").
Anyway, go to this guy's site. He sells downloads for lots of guns but there are freebies on the site as well. He has available for free a more sophistcated version of the Cypriot arm-breaker pictured above.
If that's too primative go here. For around $400 you can buy a complete M1911, needing only to have two grooves milled (or filed) into the frame forging and assembled. The beauty part is this: You'll end up with a "Colt 45" made to military specs with no paper trail and no serial number. Yes, it's legal, unless you sell it, but who'd want to?
Anyway, a quote from Karl Hess from a famous Playboy inview that I read in '76 or so:
"When guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns"
And last - and I really mean it (this is a "Minnesota Long Goodbye" coutesy of Garrison Keilor) a poem that speaks for itself:

Ode to a Sten Gun
By Gunner. S.N. Teed

You wicked piece of vicious tin!
Call you a gun? Don't make me grin.
You're just a bloated piece of pipe.
You couldn't hit a hunk of tripe.
But when you're with me in the night,
I'll tell you pal, you're just alright!

Each day I wipe you free of dirt.
Your dratted corners tear my shirt.
I cuss at you and call you names,
You're much more trouble than my dames.
But boy, do I love to hear you yammer
When you 're spitting lead in a business manner.

You conceited pile of salvage junk.
I think this prowess talk is bunk.
Yet if I want a wall of lead
Thrown at some Jerry's head
It is to you I raise my hat;
You're a damn good pal...
You silly gat!