I am familiar with 80% receivers and yes, they do rather readily demonstrate the absurdity of US gun laws (though I think the fact that the assault weapon's ban

I am familiar with 80% receivers and yes, they do rather readily demonstrate the absurdity of US gun laws (though I think the fact that the assault weapon's ban deals with bayonets attachment points demonstrates that better). But that's a legal technicality. If you actually outlawed most of the parts for a gun (particularly the barrel), it would be a lot harder to manufacture a decent gun, certainly harder than growing drugs. How much harder? Technically, I'm not sure. However, Australia, England, and Germany, all of which have rather restrictive gun laws, don't seem to have that much of a problem with home built guns. Nor, as far as I know, do they have a large problem with illegally imported guns. They do, however, have problems with drugs. Look, gun control has a lot of really stupid proponents(witness the assault weapon's ban on scary looking guns), but the argument that banning guns wouldn't work because prohibition of drugs failed is almost as stupid. It's almost as much of a blatant attempt at pandering to the liberal pro legalization crowd as the "think of the children" anti-gun stuff is to whoever listens to that crap. Countries have done it and it appears to work in so far as it does seriously reduce gun crime. It's possible there are too many guns in the US to actually ban them, but that is not the argument of the "war on drugs" analogy. Furthermore, I think that's also moot. Criminals get arrested and get their guns confiscated, guns break, they get disposed off to avoid having evidence of a crime, the supply of extent criminal guns will dwindle. As to the large set of legal gun owners in the US, some of whom might have "boating accidents" and not turn in their guns, presumably they are not going to go out and start robbing connivence stores just because. Though I grant, this whole line of reasoning is a debatable point , but there is no real analogy to the war on drugs. This doesn't mean prohibition is a good idea at all. The question of course is 1) does it actually reduce violent crime and 2) even if it did, is it morally right to take away people's ability to defend themselves.