I could have a gun by noon tomorrow. I wouldn’t even need to pay for it.
I’ve got a patient who has been trying to give me a gun for years because he’s worried about my safety. I’ve adamantly refused it, of course. I finally (after consulting with my supervisor) took a small keychain can of pepper spray from him to satisfy his need to protect me.
Even if we remove that admittedly odd duck from the equation, the answer is still yes. Might take a day or two, but I could make it happen.
I live in Chicago, fer Chrissakes. Anyone who can’t find an illegal gun here isn’t trying.
I’m not sure about the question. I could easily arrange a face-to-face purchase. But those aren’t illegal and the only way I could make it an illegal transaction would be to somehow invalidate myself by intentionally committing a felony or something. Some one who cannot purchase is de facto doing an illegal purchase, but the definition is sort of tautological. I suppose I could also take some drugs and then lie on a legal 4473 purchase.
Why would you have to disassemble anything? Transporting an unloaded gun in a trunk is legal in all 50 states.
“Socially awkward kid”??? Just to clarify, are you referring to the psychopath who butchered people inside the Pulse nightclub? The mass-murdering, radical, fanatical, Muslim terrorist who pledged allegiance to ISIS? I see no reason why such a mass-murdering terrorist couldn’t ask his fellow Muslim terrorists to loan him a firearm, or a few pipe bombs, or a pressure cooker and some fireworks. If he had to resort to dealing with outsiders (non-radical, fanatical, Muslim terrorists), he could make a few contacts thru the buying of illegal drugs. Drug dealers don’t seem to have any problems obtaining illegal firearms or illegal drugs. Bring cash.
IF you couldn’t buy a gun legally (let’s say the delusionally paranoid are correct and suddenly all guns are banned from legal sale and all gun shops and gun shows close overnight), could you get one anyway? It’s a question about the availability of illegal guns.
No question I could but then again I am basically inner-city; ghetto does have its advantages. I am sure at least 20% of the houses on my street have some kind of illegally obtained firearm (I’ve seen a few of them) and I wouldn’t be shocked if the actual percentage is well over half. Lord knows it’s next to impossible to convince many of my neighbors that they can get the darn things legally.
You do realize he wasn’t just a socially awkward kid, right?
We might be able to get some network information from AG Loretta E. Lynch. Her office, and the FBI, were able to question the monster’s wife before they misplaced her.
I still believe drug dealers would be the most likely people to aid in an attempt to illegally buy firearms.
That and the neighborhood bar; assuming you are a regular there. If you are in a rural area, I would try the bar first but plan on hitting it 5 times a week for a month or so before asking around. The local grange wouldn’t be a bad place either.
Unless you are both an expert machinist and have good knowledge of hardening and forging processes, I do not think building a semi-automatic weapon is anywhere near as easy as you believe it to be. Doing so would require more than just a “basic metal lathe and mill”; you will also need some kind of end mill, likely a MIG welder, a precision drill press, a carbide tap & die kit, and various finishing tools, as well as an ability to form springs and perform controlled heat treatment and hardening operations. Although I have never built a firearm from stock, I have built protptypes of various delatching, separating, cutting, severing, and penetrating mechanisms of complexity and precision comparable to a simple automatic firearm using a modern fully equipped machine shop, and it is not trivial to make a precision mechanism (which an autoloading pistol would be) to function reliably, even when it is build to print.
A zip gun can be made from components found in the hardware store, but I wouldn’t want to fire anything larger than low power small caliber rounds like a .22 LR or .32 S&W. I’ve seen what ruptured fireams can do to someone, and I’d like to retain my hypothetical ability to play thr piano even if I never get beyond “Chopsticks”.
I’ve had people try to illegally give me guns, and I could quite easily stroll into any one of a dozen neighbor’s houses (no one locks their doors) and pick up any number of un-secured firearms without anyone being the wiser. People are really stupid about guns around here.
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