LizMichael.com - $200 Machine Gun - Richard W. Stevens, Esq.

The 18th Amendment, ratified on January 16, 1919, made it illegal to make, transport, or sell alcoholic beverages anywhere in the United States. January 16, 1920, marked the beginning of the 13-year social experiment called Prohibition.

Americans who learned nothing from the Prohibition experience now heedlessly seek laws that prohibit the sale, possession and use of firearms. Gun prohibitionists don’t realize that their policies will backfire.

During the Prohibition era, organized crime grew to supply the popular demand for alcohol. Illegal liquor suppliers became rich, organized and powerful. Criminal syndicates competed with one another ... by intimidation, arson, mayhem and murder.

Government efforts to enforce Prohibition clogged the courts and jammed the jails. Because the criminal syndicates were so rich, they were able to corrupt many law enforcement officers, prosecutors and judges.

If America embraces Gun Prohibition, then black market gun makers, importers and sellers will be the billionaires of the next century. Organized crime will inherit an unparalleled growth industry.

How would this occur? If common sense and morality fail in America, if the Constitution and Bill of Rights are shredded by politicians and buried by public apathy, if our unalienable rights are lost and all legal guns are confiscated, then three things will happen.

First, violent and property crimes will increase, because the victims will mostly be disarmed and unprotected. Second, the black market will respond by supplying firearms to people who don’t want to be victims of the crime wave. Third, people will organize to defend themselves against the criminals -- they will form citizen militias.

As with alcohol Prohibition, the gun laws won’t matter as much as money and power and corruption. Everybody who wants a gun will be able to get one.

Prohibition did not stop the consumption of alcohol for one very practical reason: Anybody can make booze. Consider that in 1928-1929, Federal agents seized more than 62,500 stills. That number counts only the makers who got caught -- thousands of others escaped detection.

The same is true for firearms. Any person handy with common tools can make a fully automatic weapon. Philip A. Luty wrote a book entitled Expedient Homemade Firearms: The 9mm Submachine Gun (Paladin Press) which shows exactly how to do it. Mr. Luty proved it by making a working machine gun. The British government jailed Mr. Luty last year just because he built a test model.

When Gun Prohibition comes, black market gun factories will spring up, both here and overseas. Gangster money will flow into the gun industry, just as it does for the illicit drug business. As during Prohibition, anyone who wants the product will be able to get it.

Prohibition bootleggers did not make low-alcohol wine and beer. Usually, they made hard liquor. (A simple still makes pure alcohol from grain, for example.) Making weaker products wasted resources. Buyers wanted more bang for their alcohol buck, and it’s safer and easier to transport smaller quantities of stronger spirits.

With Gun Prohibition, black market manufacturers won’t bother with .22 caliber rifles. They will build and sell high- power rifles and easily concealable pistols. If all guns are illegal, then making the more desirable and more powerful 9mm full-auto will be just as risky as making a .22 revolver. Fully automatic weapons will become plentiful and relatively cheap. Based on materials cost and labor, the full-auto rifle might sell on the black market for about $200.

The gun prohibitionists, like the 1920's Prohibitionists, would not just fail. Their policies would produce a new era of organized crime and corruption, an upsurge in violent and property crimes, and -- shocking to gun phobes -- the $200 machine gun in the hands of private citizens.

We Americans must choose the morally correct path: We must destroy "gun control." We must not be forced to buy firearms from criminals.

Richard W. Stevens may be contacted through Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, www.jpfo.org, P.O.Box 270143, Hartford, WI 53027 - (262) 673-9745

"These things I believe: That government should butt out. That freedom is our most precious commodity and if we are not eternally vigilant government will take it all away. That individual freedom demands individual responsibility. That government is not a necessary good but an unavoidable evil. That the executive branch has grown too strong, the judicial branch too arrogant and the legislative branch too stupid. That political parties have become close to meaningless. That government should work to insure the rights of the individual, not plot to take them away. That government should provide for the national defense and work to insure domestic tranquillity. That foreign trade should be fair rather than free. That America should be wary of foreign entanglements. That the tree of liberty needs to be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. That guns do more than protect us from criminals; more importantly, they protect us from the ongoing threat of government. That states are the bulwark of our freedom. That states should have the right to secede from the Union. That once a year we should hang someone in government as an example to his fellows." --Lyn Nofziger

The $200 Machine Gun

Sponsored by LizMichael.com, P. O. Box 25585, Tempe AZ 85285 - e-mail: GoLizzieGo@lizmichael.com