Can you guess what all this talk, talk, talk about gun control is doing?

[Scootaloo]

44. it's the economy of the black market, and a matter of scale.

Prohibition on drugs and alcohol was an abysmal failure for several reasons;

1) Addiction. People become dependent on these substances; their bodies come to regard them as integral to life. With that being the case, an addict isn't going to be especially worried about the laws they break. People are not addicted to guns.

2) Because of addiction, any amount of drugs / alcohol is valuable. More is better, sure, but if all you've got is an in-flight bottle of jack daniels or a single line's worth of coke, you will find a buyer for it. Individual pieces of guns are completely useless, even to the majority of people who want them; you need the whole thing.

3) This makes transportation a cinch. Drugs and alcohol, being desired (and thus still valuable) even in small quantities makes small shipments profitable. Most drugs are quite compact on their own (alcohol, being liquid, is pretty bulky). Guns of any variety are bulky and much more difficult to transport... which makes transport costs higher.

4) Alcohol and many drugs are easy to manufacture and are basically infinitely renewable; so long as you have sugar, you can make booze, so long as you have dirt, you can make pot, etc. Gun parts are not so easy to make - at least, not with any quality. They require machining, often quite precise machining. And of course, you need the metal - I don't suppose people will be running bootleg smelters?

5) The ease of production makes drugs and alcohol extremely profitable under prohibition. For a few cents' investment, you can make several dollars' return. Guns and other manufactured products have a much lower margin of profit, because of the money investment, the costs of transportation, and market saturation; a batch of heroin will disappear, an illicit gun never will.

This isn't to say there will not be a black market for firearms under a ban - of course there will - but it will be under no circumstances comparable to the markets for illicit drugs or alcohol under prohibition. It'd be more comparable to the illegal ivory trade - less than that actually since ivory is another commodity that is still valuable in small amounts.