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I'll grant you that US interstate borders are mostly imaginary lines, with zero control... But our national borders aren't nearly as controlled as people seem t

I'll grant you that US interstate borders are mostly imaginary lines, with zero control... But our national borders aren't nearly as controlled as people seem to think. The United States imports nearly all of the cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, and fentanyl that we consume, and the quantities we consume are vast. Even with the COVID related border restrictions, all of those drugs are at record-low street prices, and record-high purity. That generally means they are being imported with ease, and with a low percentage of lost product along the way. This trend has been growing consistently since the passage of NAFTA in the 1990s, which had massive economic benefits, but also rendered the US/Mexico and US/Canada borders quite porous. Commercial trucks carry massive quantities of cargo into the US, every day. We've never bothered to devote enough border control resources to subject them nearly the same level of scrutiny as pre-NAFTA trucking. Nobody wants to pay for the infrastructure, manpower, or shipping delays. I live in Southern California, and drive ~10-12 hours a week on highways. Anecdotally, about 10-20% of our truck traffic is plated/registered in a Mexican state, not a US state. Many of these trucks are visibly used for local deliveries... I believe there are some state & federal DOT rules to discourage this, but it doesn't seem like anyone is really enforcing them. Anyway, my point is that our national land borders are hardly effective, and that the situation is by design according to our current national priorities.

rtkwe 5y ago
They're not perfect but they're much harder to pass items through compared to the non existent state borders. Also guns are quite a bit harder to make than drugs to the point where if the public market was completely cut off there would be several components that would be extremely difficult to replace on a home or illegal manufacturing basis. There are 3D print gun designs out there but they're largely replacing just the receiver body which is the restricted component in most gun control regimes. Rifled barrels and bolts are the real pain point for 3D printed guns atm, there's a few designs like the Liberator that are entirely printed but they're mostly single shot limited use items.
- SkittyDog 5y ago
  "Also guns are quite a bit harder to make than drugs..." This statement is so broad as to be completely meaningless. "Guns" and "drugs" are both vast categories containing elements of wildly varying complexity. So this depends entirely on which drugs and which guns you're talking about. Alcohol and single-shot pipe shotguns are stupidly trivial... Anyone with YouTube and some patience can figure it out. Meanwhile, making MDMA and AR-15s require a considerable investment in equipment and skills. Alcohol is far easier to make than an AR-15--and MDMA is far harder to make than a shotgun. FTR, I have personally made both a pipe shotgun and alcohol from scratch. Super fun projects... Neither one should cost you more than $10 at the hardware store, and a half-day in the garage.
  - rtkwe 5y ago
    I should have known to be more precise, I meant guns other than single shot barely-guns like hardware store pipe shotguns. Those barely show up even in heavily gun controlled countries because they're so fiddly and slow to use and reload they're not that useful compared to a knife.

rtkwe 5y ago

They're not perfect but they're much harder to pass items through compared to the non existent state borders. Also guns are quite a bit harder to make than drugs to the point where if the public market was completely cut off there would be several components that would be extremely difficult to replace on a home or illegal manufacturing basis. There are 3D print gun designs out there but they're largely replacing just the receiver body which is the restricted component in most gun control regimes. Rifled barrels and bolts are the real pain point for 3D printed guns atm, there's a few designs like the Liberator that are entirely printed but they're mostly single shot limited use items.

SkittyDog 5y ago
"Also guns are quite a bit harder to make than drugs..." This statement is so broad as to be completely meaningless. "Guns" and "drugs" are both vast categories containing elements of wildly varying complexity. So this depends entirely on which drugs and which guns you're talking about. Alcohol and single-shot pipe shotguns are stupidly trivial... Anyone with YouTube and some patience can figure it out. Meanwhile, making MDMA and AR-15s require a considerable investment in equipment and skills. Alcohol is far easier to make than an AR-15--and MDMA is far harder to make than a shotgun. FTR, I have personally made both a pipe shotgun and alcohol from scratch. Super fun projects... Neither one should cost you more than $10 at the hardware store, and a half-day in the garage.
- rtkwe 5y ago
  I should have known to be more precise, I meant guns other than single shot barely-guns like hardware store pipe shotguns. Those barely show up even in heavily gun controlled countries because they're so fiddly and slow to use and reload they're not that useful compared to a knife.