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Pakistan Gun Market


MartynGT4
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I'd imagine a $36 handgun would be more dangerous to the user rather than the enemy.

If you had a pistol, rifle or shotgun handmade in this country it would cost a bomb but you would be very proud of it and expect it to last for ever.

These manufacturing guys are paid peanuts, like the ones who make your trainers and t-shirts, so the weapons are cheap. If they are using the right materials they will last much longer than your cheap trainers.

In WW2 9mm sten- guns were produced for 7 shillings and 6 pence. About 30p of todays cash. They are still in use today.

Fully automatic, 28 rounds, light and very adaptable.

As long as you kept your fingers out of the ejector port they were perfectly safe.

No, they wont have the accuracy of a top line sporting rifle but they will still kill people.

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I've seen a fair number of "Khyber Pass Copies" that originate from this kind of market, and you couldnt pay me enough to put live ammunition into one. Whilst technically capable of operating, soft iron barrels and other pressure bearing parts made from old bits of car dont mix well with fullbore cartridges.

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Workshops in that video look pretty much the same as when I spent a few hours in the tribal areas in 1974.

 

I was the very junior member of a team sent to Pakistan to report on small and medium industries. We were mainly looking at textiles (hand-woven carpets), engineering (lots of tiny factories making single-cylinder diesel engines similar to early 20th century Lister or Ruston & Hornsby products), sports goods (Grays of Cambridge had a factory in Sialkot making tennis rackets and hockey sticks) and musical instruments (cornets, trumpets, bagpipes, etc).

 

I cannot remember quite how we got invited into the tribal areas, but it was certainly "unofficial". As we drove into a narrow valley there were men on the hill top using a tripod-mounted heliograph to flash signals to somebody on another hill -- real "Boys Own Paper" stuff. The Mercedes in which we travelled had a hole in the windscreen, approximately .303 diameter, from some previous event.

 

Nearly all that we saw being made were copies of Lee-Enfield, mostly SMLE with just a few No4. I dont think there were any Kalashnikovs, and I only recall seeing one sub-machine gun that was just being finished and stamped "MADE IN CHAINA" (that was the spelling).

 

It was fascinating to see men cutting the rifling grooves. The cutting tool was on a rod attached to a flat steel strip about 50mm x 6mm, which had been twisted. The strip had a swivel handle, and was moved to and fro through a fixed slot, so that the cutting tool had to follow the same path as the twisted strip. Perhaps that is how all rifles were made at one time -- maybe some firearms historian can comment?

 

We were not invited to test any of the products.

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