>Put this way: what if it was an illegal firearm? We can't just turn a blind eye to youth breaking law, but I don't think you realize just how common this is.

>Put this way: what if it was an illegal firearm? We can't just turn a blind eye to youth breaking law, but I don't think you realize just how common this is. There are very few people managing high school and college machine shops who haven't helped cover up an NFA violation. Even outside that making oil filter silencers for .22 rifles (or other cheap guns high schoolers have access to) is not at all uncommon. Eventually most grow out of it (i.e. they have a real life and the risk reward calculus changes). Likewise teenagers routinely get exposed to hard drugs and "the system" is the last thing that helps that. Damn near every adult has a bunch of "I'd be in prison if the caught me" stories from high school. So yeah, I think we should handle both with a stern talking too about federal prison and not much else. Most kids will mature out of this behavior and it's not worth risking screwing all of them to try and pre-emptively save the few that won't grow out of it.