[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by kyp275

Local circulation has little to do with global prices. Take the Mexican cartel for example, they already source the majority of their weapons from south america. Also, it's not very difficult to manufacture your own weapon, especially stuff like AKs

Global prices have nothing to do with it. It's local prices. It doesn't matter if you can buy an AK for 100$ in Colombia, if the process to transport it to the US is 500$.

Also, local circulation of weapons is very important in determining weapon prices. If everyone and his mother owns a gun, you don't need to go to Colombia to get a gun. The black market price for a gun will approach the real market value of a gun, as they'll be extremely easy to obtain.

It's the difference between a criminal organisation being able to get 2 guns, and being able to get 200 guns.

I completely disagree on the government control idea. Government is not a single monolithic entity, and the lower levels are often very corruptible regardless of the level of control the government has as a whole. China has a very restrictive government, and they would be hard-pressed to get more corrupted if they tried.

Government corruption is a metric of government control. A corrupt government is a weak government. Corruption reduces the ability of the government to project it's power. Corruption is rife in Mexico or China, making it easy for organised crime to do business. In the US, corruption exists on a much smaller scale, and is not systemic.

Oh yea, and the gangs and mafias are doing just fine in China, and they have little problem smuggling and producing their own weapons.

Because, contrary to what most people think, the control of the Chinese government is not solid, and in most of the country has been compromised by corruption, allowing extenive opportunities for organised criminals. Compare that to Northern Europe.

The police does not have a magic 8 ball that tells them what crime is about to occur where, making them a reactionary force that actually isn't capable of protecting civilians in most cases - they're primarily there for deterrence, and when that fails, to clean up and try to punish the bad guys.

No, they don't have an "8 ball", but if a particular gang is illegally practicing some kind of racket, it doesn't take them long to find out and bust them.

If you decided to get some friends together and hold your neighbour's property to ransom, would you get away with it? Or would you get busted by the police? You might manage it once, or maybe even twice, but it wouldn't take long for you to be reported and for the police to come down on you. The same doesn't occur in the less controlled parts of Mexico.

And why would "all those thugs" have guns? most riots starts with peaceful protests that devolves into rioting, they don't start out as private armies marching down the street. And we've had much worse riots than that, and guess what? neighborhood banded together to protect themselves for the rioters with their weapons.

If you remove all gun controls, the logical end point is that everyone and their mother will own a gun, logically that means every rioter will also have a gun. What riots have occured on American soil that were on the scale of the London riots?

Of course rioters won't be a private army, but they can still kill a lot of policemen (and each other) before getting subdued.

If everyone has a gun, and there's no law and order, what would logically happen?