There is a Federal agancy that is

dedicated to the three things that Americans love, alcohol, tobacco and firearms.
Right now there is, in congress, a move to outlaw semi automatic firearms and I can see something happening that congress most likely hasn't thought of and is likely to deny.

On of the things that people do not think of is the law of unintended consequences. They do something for what they think is a good reason and bad things happen as a result.

A great example is the Volstead act that outlawed the sale, posession and maufacture of alcoholic beverages. It was done with the best of intentions and the results of the act were a whole lot different than had been anticipated.

Entire criminal empires flourished by supplying alcohol, the most famous gangster to rise to power being Al Capone.

Another unintended consequence of the Volstead act was that with no control over alcohol because it was illegal anyway was the number of moonshiners and bathtub gin manufacturers out there that produced questionable and even dangerous alcoholic beverages. A lot of people wend blind and a few died drinking poorly made hootch.

A lot more died in turf wars over alcohol.

I say this because if Congress does pass a so-called assault weapons ban that it will create a vacuum for these weapons.

We can see now that by sales that people want these weapons and are willing to pay a lot of money for them. With the number of federal checks totalling over 2.8 MILLLION in December it says that the demand is there, especially if you add the number of sales made in states that use their own instant check system instead of the Federal system. That doesn't even include the face to face transfers that are permitted in several states.

It's possible that during December the number of firearms that changes hands was between 5 and 6 million, many of them being so-called assault weapons.

This is a pretty good indicator that there is a market out there for these things and it is pretty likely that the market will be there if they are outlawed.

Enter criminal enterprise which for some odd reason does not obey the rules and regulations set down by governing bodies.

A criminal enterprise is set up for the same porpose any other enertprise is set up for. It is set up simply to make the entrenpreneur a few bucks. The person setting up an enterprise wants to make money.

Where there is a market there is generally someone out there willing to take a few risks to fill the market. Dairy farmers produce milk to (legally) sell to people that want it and drug dealers (illegally) sell narcotics to people that want them.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that a firearm ban is going to create a vacuum and that someone is simply going to hop in there and start a business of some sort to supply the demand.

Seeing that arms dealers right now work outside of the law, all a ban is likely to do is increase business for them and is likely to create more criminal enterprises.

Of course because the criminal enterprises are criminal they will not be playing by the rules that legal businesses play by and you can expect to see a few more casualties accumulate from turf wars and things of this nature. Criminals tend to play a little of the rough side.

It makes sense. After all if you are cheated in a deal of something legal you can go to the police or the courts. When you are dealing in, for example, cocaine and you get cheated in a deal you have to enforce the deal yourself. Generally violence results in deals gone sour in the underground narcotic business.

Look what happend during prohibition. The St. Valentine's Day massacre is a classic example of enforcement by those dealing outside of the law.

I see that the people in power that are planning on trying to ban a few firearms are thinking that doing so will simply make violence go away but it most likely isn't.

This effort to reduce violence is very likely to have the unintended consequence of increasing it to higher levels.

Of course that will lead to other bans which will lead to more illegal enterprises and more violence.

The truth of the matter is that any gun ban is going to have the unintended consequence of an increase in crime and associated violence.

To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html