Review Beyond State Control: Improvised and Craft-produced Small Arms and Light Weapons firearms Small Arms Survey

Review: Beyond State Control: Improvised and Craft-produced Small Arms and Light Weapons. G. Hays and N.R. Jenzen-Jones. 136 pages. 

Published on the Internet, November 4th, 2018, by the Small Arms Survey, paid for by the U.S. State Department Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement.  

Beyond State Control is an aptly titled study of improvised, homemade, and craft-produced firearms and light weapons around the world.

This is an important topic. It defines a floor beyond with controls are no longer effective. If people desire small arms, they will be able to obtain them by home manufacture, through improvised and craft-production.

I have written extensively about the subject. I used the term "small-shop" but "craft-produced" is more inclusive and descriptive.

Beyond State Control covers everything I have written about homemade, improvised, and craft-produced firearms for the last 40 years.

This is a well researched and comprehensive paper. It will be useful reading for every student of citizen disarmament, or "gun control". I recognized many of the items photographed in the extensive documentation.

The authors are experts in their field. They have studied the improvised and craft-manufacture of small arms extensively.  There are a few small errors. When writing about such a vast field of information, they are excusable.

On page 22, the authors include the Liberator pistol as being designed for production in small workshops during WWII. It was not designed for workshop production, but was mass produced in a highly efficient industrial plant. This error is corrected on page 36.

On page 46, a hand indexed revolver is mistakenly called a "pepperbox" type weapon.

I emailed the editor of Beyond State Control about these small errata.

Those minor errors are overcome by the wealth and breadth of the information in this seminal report. In the "Key Findings" there is this gem:

Improvised and craft-produced small arms account for a sizable proportion of weapons seized in domestic law enforcement operations in several countries. In the UK, some 80 per cent of all guns used in crime in 2011 and 2012 were improvised, craft-produced, or converted; in São Paulo, Brazil, 48 per cent of the sub-machine guns recovered during the same period were homemade; and in Indonesia, 98 percent of the guns confiscated from robbery suspects in 2013 were homemade.

Making factory produced firearms difficult to procure creates strong incentives to produce firearms beyond state control. The large majority of improvised and craft produced weapons are used by criminals:

Data suggests that the highest concentrations of craft-produced small arms are among individual criminals and criminal groups outside of active conflict zones.

In the United States, improvised and craft-produced guns are primarily made by hobbyists for technological interest and ideological reasons.

Beyond State Control specifically excludes the study of 3D printing technology and 80% receivers, though they are mentioned in passing.

The paper covers improvised ammunition and light weapons such as mortars, grenade launchers, and Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPGs) and recoilless rifles.

Many images have been garnered from blogs and alternative media sources.

There is an excellent section on improvised and craft-produced sub-machine guns on pages 76-83. The pictures are worth the attention of any student of population disarmament.

On page 116, the paper  mentions improvised guns being produced specifically to target gun "buybacks".

The authors understand that controlling the making of firearms relies on controlling the flow of information:

Many of the books, magazine articles, and other publications containing instructions for the manufacture of improvised and craft-produced weapons have since been digitized and are readily available via the Internet. Home gunsmiths and hobbyists—including those who produce firearms legally in countries such as the United State—regularly post technical know-how and techniques related to home gunsmithing and the manufacture of arms on YouTube and other social media platforms. In some cases, non-state armed groups have also produced online documents, guides, and videos that provide instructions for the manufacture of improvised or craft-produced weapons. Various armed groups in Iraq and Syria, for instance, have posted videos focused on the design and construction of anti-materiel rifles (ARES, 2018).

The Second Amendment and the First Amendment support each other. Both are essential to limited government.

"Gun crime" in the UK, is higher today than it was when the draconian control of firearms was implemented, starting about 1920. Brazil has a homicide rate about eight times that of the United States. Its highly restrictive gun control scheme reached its nadir, (or apex, depending on your view point) 15 years ago.

"Gun Control" is promoted as a crime reduction measure in the Western world. That is how it was characterized in England in the 1920s and later. It is how it is promoted in the United States today. The ability of criminals and criminal enterprises to access effective, improvised, homemade, and craft-produced small arms creates a limit, determined by technology and physics, on how much crime can be reduced by limiting legal access to firearms.

Many millions of improvised and craft-produced small arms have and are being manufactured the world over. Craft-produced arms are becoming well known in international black markets.

If people desire small arms, their desires will be met by improvised and craft-production.  If they do not desire small arms, no controls are necessary. The arms produced may not be the most sophisticated weapons. They are sufficient for criminal activities.  There are few crimes committed with firearms in the United States that would not be accomplished with homemade pistols and sub-machine guns. The improvised and craft-produced arms are not subject to controls, and more likely to cause injury to users and bystanders.  Improvised and craft-produced firearms are more than sufficient to provide for the needs of the small class of violent criminals, as seen in Brazil.

If you are interested in the political and practical aspects of restricting populations' access to firearms, read the entire 136 page report.


©2018 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

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