You want some common-sense gun control? Here you go.

[Scootaloo]

59. This bullshit again. "People will break the law, so don't bother having a law!"

Prohibition of alcohol and drugs fail for some simple reasons.

One, they're fucking easy to make and transport. You can make a few thousand dollars' worth of cocaine for about two bucks, and ferry it around very easily. This low cost of production and ease of transport combine with prohibition to make the profit to cost ratio astronomical and encourage the trade. I'm no expert, but I don't think you can make an automatic rifle for a few cents and hike it across the border stuffed up your ass to sell for a couple grand.

Two, illicit substances are generally regarded as only truly being harmful to the people who partake of them, if that. This perception of "not hurting anybody but me" makes the prohibition look rather ridiculous and actually encourages breaking the ban, just to show the law what for. Maybe if every time a gun-user did something dumb with their guns, only their own heads got blown off, that would be different (oddly this would be called "malfunction" and such an item would possibly face recall... ERMAGERD PERHERBISHUN!)

The more expensive and more prohibitive to move an item is, the higher the costs are, the lower the profits, the greater risk of detection and punishment, thus the greater the success of prohibition. The more widely an item is recognized as having an inherent cost to others, the more likely people on the "buying" end are going to honor the ban and not seek the product - take for example trade in illicit ivory.

Will it be 100% effective? Of course not, no law ever is - if they were, then laws would be fucking redundant. There is always a black market for proscribed items. The idea is not to halt the trade, but to curb and diminish it, and to bring penalties to those who persist anyway.