I remember when a cop once came to our health class to talk about gun safety. He brought his handgun, a shotgun, and the mother of all guns: a brand new, fully automatic submachine gun (SMG). The latter, of course, was the crowd pleaser, as he proceeded to tell us all how fast it could fire, how interested the secret service was in his possession of it when political figures came to town, and how expensive the rounds (i.e., bullets) were for it.
The latter is what I'll focus on, as it's the reason for the whole nonsense surrounding bans on guns in the first place. You see, officer whatever-his-name-was made a crucial point: each round (at that point) had cost him $2 dollars. That means, even though he had a deadly killing machine, in order to fire off 100 rounds, he'd have to pay $200 dollars out-of-pocket. This perplexed me. Why, since the rounds seemed pretty run-of-the-mill to me, did they cost so freakin' much in comparison to both handgun rounds and shotgun shells?
It was only once I got a background in medicine and politics that the reason became amazingly clear: that's exactly how gun manufacturers and government want it to be.
(continued)As an analogy, let's examine the effects of regulation in the field of medicine. The easiest example is prescription drugs.
When a powerful drug is first released, it is labeled prescription-only. That is, only people who have, on paper, been determined to have a medical necessity for the drug are given access to it. It's controlled, and you can go to jail for possessing that drug without a prescription. We seem to be okay with that, because it's done in the name of "protecting us" from harming ourselves. I disagree with it, but that's irrelevant.
What it all comes down to is price. When a drug is prescription-only, it makes the one company that produces it extremely rich; however, when/if it is allowed to become over-the-counter (i.e., available to anyone who wants it), the price of the drug drops at a geometric rate. Part of the reason derives from the health insurance racket. People only end up paying a $10 dollar co-pay on a drug that would cost them $250 dollars had they not had insurance, so they think that the difference between prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) is simply availability.
But, look at that $250 dollars again. The insurance companies make deals with drug companies to be reimbursed for a considerable portion of that, so they end up keeping a sizable amount of the cost. The pharmacy turns around the cost of the drug with markup, and the drug companies are simply repaying the loans (if they're not already paid off) on the drug development costs. On drugs like Adderall (dextroamphetamine/levoamphetamine), they're making pure profit because the drugs were developed a century ago.
When the drug goes OTC, lots of people lose money. The insurance company loses money. The pharmacy makes a vastly decreased profit, and the drug company eventually gets competition from generic label manufacturers (e.g., Claritin now competes with "loratadine," which is the
exact same thing). Because of all this, the consumer only pays $10 bucks for a 10 day supply if he's a sucker, or $2 bucks for a 10 day supply if he's smart. Either way, he's paying less money.
Fast forward to guns. The OTC equivalents of guns are handguns, shotguns, and various rifles, as more or less, everyone can obtain them. The prescription equivalents of guns are the cool ones: machine guns, as only law enforcement personnel and the military can obtain them-- that is, only those with a "necessity" for them. When it comes to the pricing logistics, the same rules therefore apply. Whereas OTC guns cost pennies per bullet to the consumer (we'll say $10 bucks for a 10 day supply), prescription-grade guns cost dollars more (we'll say $1000 for a 10-day supply-- and that's on the infrequent use assumption).
It's not to say that the prior-prescription-now-OTC guns are any different. The AK-47 made in 1980 is no more or less deadly than the AK-47 made in 1980 but bought in 2000, particularly if it's been fixed up; however, because the AK-47 is no longer of value to gun manufacturers to keep restricted, it is deregulated (to an extent). Yet, when legislative middlemen are added to the process, much like the pharmacy and health insurance companies, everyone is able to charge more money for the same thing-- but only because it's restricted from capitalism.
Now, we haven't even taken into account the bonuses of the black market. Because, yet again, manufacturers recoup massive amounts of money. Methamphetamine, for example, is easily made from over-the-counter drugs like ephedrine and pseudoephedrine; and, as a result, drug companies that make such drugs as Sudafed make large amounts of money on the meth cooks who take advantage of that fact. Unfortunately, because they're cutting out middle men, insurance companies and pharmacies have lobbied for their share of the profits. Instead of simply outlawing the drugs completely (or trying to prescriptionize them again), they simply lobbied for semi-OTC. That is, people are limited by their consumption but in a way that's pointless and simply a pain in the ass. The result? The pharmacies recoup some of the lost profits from direct-from-manufacturer-to-meth-cook transactions, while those with medical necessity for the OTC drugs can get their doctor to prescribe them prescription-grade equivalents. Everybody wins.
The black market, when applied to guns, is the exact same. It's easier for gun manufacturers to hide transactions and middlemen to help cover their tracks than it is for local retailers to account for missing weapons. After all, much like the drug manufacturers, it's up to the gun manufacturers to report just how much product they make. So, instead of opting for complete prohibition of all guns, everybody wins by allowing some guns and not others, and making it a pain in the ass to obtain them. Long story short, no matter how outlawed guns (or drugs) become, anyone who wants them will
always find a way.
Therefore, we develop a trend. It behooves any manufacturer of an essential good (guns and drugs) to find a way to get the product semi-outlawed. The reasoning is simple: it increases profit margins by bullshitting the people into thinking it's for their own good.
Most of the hard drugs we see today were invented long before drug prohibition. Hell-- marijuana, opium, and cocaine grow in fields. But, because they've been around for so long (much like aspirin), there are few, if any, ways to make money on them. It wasn't until the last century that literally outlawing the natural forms (e.g. marijuana) while allowing their synthetic forms (e.g. Marinol) did we find a way of making money on them.
... and the same holds true for guns. Leonardo Di Vinci invented the first machine gun. The Colt revolver was invented around the time of the American civil war. SMGs were available since World War II. It wasn't until gun prohibition that they (and their bullets) all became insanely profitable.
And that, my friends, is why assault weapons are banned. It's not because the government is afraid of you, and it's not because they want to oppress you. Trust me-- they're scared shitless of you, and they have known since realizing the plausible success of
Brave New World over
Nineteen Eighty Four (1984) that the best way to keep you in line is to let you feel as free as possible. They know that if they pissed us off we'd rebel-- I mean, it's not like the army isn't composed of civilians as well, so we all plausibly have access to assault rifles, black market or not.
A gun manufacturer tossing a few million to the NRA every year is nothing compared to billion dollar contracts to governments across the world. The NRA buys into it, because it pays their salaries. It all comes down to money--
everyone makes more money when certain things are banned. Freedom is simply one half of the decimal point, and sadly, freedom finds itself tumbling increasingly more to the right.
Cheer$.
