Want to know what one of the easiest guns to make in a basement workshop is?  A submachine gun.  That’s right.  Excerpt:

In 1998, a British subject named P.A. Luty decided to illustrate the fallacy of complete civilian disarmament by building a weapon that lacked any of the registered parts of the firearm.

Recently, the YouTube channel “Forgotten Weapons” got a chance to take a look at the result, a submachine gun built entirely with parts that could be picked up at the hardware store.

As noted in the video, Luty ended up spending some time in a British prison for his efforts, as would people who were caught with such weapons in pretty much any other nation on Earth.

Yet Luty proved his point.

Since his book was first published, such firearms have shown up in Australia, Indonesia, and many other places.

Some might argue that Luty is responsible for a self-fulfilling prophecy, that the only reason he was right was because he dropped the plans in the criminal’s laps. Unfortunately, that would only be true of Luty’s designs were the only option. After all, hasn’t the “zip gun” been around for ages?

None of this takes into account the tooling existing in some backyard shops these days. Metal lathes, milling machines, and 3D printers all can be useful in building far more sophisticated firearms that Luty’s effective but almost prehistoric design.

In other words, guns are definitely here to stay. Try as the leftist gun control advocates might, they’ll never be able to get all of the weapons. Even if they did, though, guns would still be produced for illegal purposes.

In this scenario, of course, there’s also the problem of rounding up somewhere north of 300 million guns already in the hands of American citizens – the vast majority of them law-abiding.  But let’s set that aside for the moment and consider the possibility of a complete confiscation of all guns – imagine someone had the ability to snap their fingers and poof every firearm out of existence.

How long do you think it would take for a robust black market to crop up?  I’m guessing a matter of hours.

Now, consider the likely consequences of that.  There’s a reason that 2nd Amendment advocates are fond of saying “if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.”  Two aspects of that would derive here; first, criminals would be armed not with crappy, cheap Hi-Points but with small, cheap, concealable submachine guns.  Second, many law-abiding citizens would become non-law-abiding, as they seek their own bathtub-gin arms to make up for the sudden disadvantage.

Bear in mind that this could be a feature, not a bug; as Ayn Rand wrote in Atlas Shrugged:

“Did you really think we want those laws observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against… We’re after power and we mean it… There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”

In either case, the end result would be a crime rate shot through the roof.

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