Yes, showing the preponderance of evidence against your easily disproven argument is actually "my agenda." Great job on calling that out.
I grew up hunting. Like any other redneck, I fired a .308 at 13yrs old, and yes it knocked me to the ground, lol. Skinned a dear that same year. I just didn't choose to make guns my entire identity.
All I am stating is the obvious. The USA is a major firearms manufacturer and exporter.
It's not "disproven" - when an organization can buy a $30k machine and crank out high-quality firearms all day long, you can't do anything to stop it.
So why aren’t they doing that today? Pretty simple empirical question.
The answer is that it is in fact easier to just buy them in the US.
How do you know "empirically" that they aren't? Who says that the US-sourced guns that they are tracing are even a substantial fraction of the overall guns in use? How can you prove empirically that the data provided by the notoriously-reliable and agenda-less Mexican government is accurate?
Mexico, 10 years ago: https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-cartel-gunsmiths/
Philippines, 13 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67PYuGQM9Fg
> Who says that the US-sourced guns that they are tracing are even a substantial fraction of the overall guns in use?
Statistics?
Believing your implication that homemade firearms or widespread and just don't show up in the seizure data is a little silly unless you can explain why this would be the case.
I think it's still a relevant point. The point isn't necessarily that it's easier for cartels to make it themselves than to smuggle guns or divert them from military sources. It's that the cartels can easily replace smuggled guns with manufactured guns and their demand for them is inelastic enough at either price point it's unlikely to effect the access to cartels.
The more likely effect is it disproportionately stops normal Mexico citizens from obtaining "illegal" guns to protect themselves but the cartels still have them, making things even worse for the Mexican people.
Sure, they can also easily replace people. Guess we just shouldn't arrest them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
they can also easily replace labs, guess we shouldn't raid them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
they can also easily replace ... guess we shouldn't ...
I mean yes if they can truly just replace all the labs and people for not much addition cost, then you're only hurting yourself to raid/jail/prosecute by arresting and raiding the labs because it comes at great cost to yourself while costing your enemy very little and not changing their operations.
You've just explained why the drug war failed and ultimately hurt us more than helped us while doing nothing to destroy the profits of the cartels.
If that's the argument the other fellow would like to make, then sure. But that's not the argument he's making. He's specifically taking issue with trying to add friction to small arms manufacture and trafficking.
All you have done is shown that you have no idea how difficult and time consuming machining is, vs. mass production.
I know for a fact that mass methamphetamine and fentanyl synthesis is more technically-difficult, more time consuming, and more capital-intensive than mass-manufacture of firearms - but good luck pushing your "Iron River" narrative lmao.
At the risk of setting off the flame war detector on this website, please explain to me why simple chemistry that can be done anywhere, is easier than setting up a mass-manufacturing factory.
I challenge you to explain to the exact relative differences.
Also, why did you bring up fentanyl? How is that related to the very well documented Iron River? Well, I suppose it actually is, as the USA's very well documented supply of guns to Mexican cartels helps them bring up fent into the USA. Yay! Sorry to interrupt your previous narrative. Please, go on king.
Gee, one requires huge industrial laboratories complete with niche equipment, highly-controlled precursors in massive quantities, and trained chemists.. the other requires commonly-available machinery and universally-obtainable, cheap materials and a scrappy high-school student who excelled in shop class.
Seriously, you have no idea what you are talking about. I can have a receiver milled from billet in the time we've spent discussing this.
Even the data you linked explains:
Privately Made Firearms Law enforcement agencies recovered and submitted 37,980 suspected privately made firearms4 (PMFs) to ATF for tracing between 2017 and 2021. It is probable that current trace data significantly underrepresents the number of PMFs recovered in crimes by LEAs due to a variety of challenges presented by PMFs, to include: • PMFs involvement in crime is an emerging issue and LEAs are just beginning to institute uniform training on the recognition, identification, and reporting of PMFs that can lead to more accurate PMF data being collected. • PMFs by their nature may have no markings at all, duplicative markings, counterfeit markings, or markings that appear to be serial numbers on parts of the firearm other than the frame or receiver. These duplicative, counterfeit, or erroneous markings can be mistaken for authentic serial numbers and markings causing law enforcement to not recognize the firearm as a PMF and/or potentially follow false leads based on these markings. As Figure OFT-04 reflects, the number of suspected PMFs recovered by law enforcement agencies and submitted to ATF for tracing increased by 1,083% from 2017 (1,629) to 2021 (19,273).
So, just domestically, home private firearms manufacturing totaled more units than all guns traced into Mexico in every given year.
lol making meth or fentanyl doesn’t require very sophisticated knowledge or expertise.
From readily available precursors, you can make fentanyl in less than one day.
The Gupta method (from readily available precursors) takes three steps, all at room temperature, and no specialized equipment at all.
That’s why it’s everywhere.
Versus non-professionally manufactured guns which… statistically pretty much don’t exist. Rounding error on any statistic you could come up with on firearms.
Yep, I'm sure cartels worth billions of dollars in annual revenue are producing tens of thousands of kilos using one-pot tweaker methods. Also which "readily-available" precursors are you referring to here? Can I pick up 10000 kg at Wal-Mart?
Non-professionally-manufactured firearms do exist, the aforementioned ATF traces indicate that they are far more prolific than Mexican imports. VICE produced a documentary almost 15 years ago on cartels in the Philippines manufacturing completely viable firearms without issue - in the woods.
Now you're making a different claim. You said that manufacturing fentanyl requires all sorts of specialized equipment and knowledge. It simply does not.
Does that mean cartels aren't sophisticated manufacturers? No, of course they are.
Second straw-man: no one said homemade firearms literally don't exist. The claim is that they are a rounding error.
Got it, you can have a lower machined quickly. That is slightly accurate. The rest is whatever/trust me bro.
I wish for you a happy rest of your day.
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