Proving once again that there is no way to actually control the proliferation of simple mechanical devices, law enforcers in Brazil discovered a factory that was producing illegal submachine guns:
Coincidentally, the day before TFB published Part 1 of a photo report on DIY weapons seized in Brazil (http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2017/10/17/bunch-diy-weapons-seized-brazil-part/), news broke that the São Paulo State Civil Police had just busted a small – but very active – illegal weapons factory in the Ferraz de Vasconcellos suburb of São Paulo, the capital city. Although clandestine firearms manufacture is not something unusual in the country, this particular facility called the attention not only due to the fact that its main product, a 9x19mm stockless submachine gun, shows a somewhat decent general finish and apparent (hand-operated by agents) smooth functioning of components, but also that the type has for long (four years, at least) been found in criminal hands in different parts of Brazil.
Some anti-gunners will probably point out that the discovery and shut down of the factory by law enforcers shows that gun control does work. While they desperately grasp at straws I will point out that this factory has either been running for four years, isn’t the only factory producing illegal submachine guns, or both because the article notes that the type of submachine gun that was being manufactured at the factory has been found in criminal hands for at least that long.
If you follow the link, you’ll find that the submachine guns, although crude, are actually pretty decent looking for a gun that is probably manufactured largely by hand. This shouldn’t come as a surprise though. If the model has been manufactured for at least four years, there has been a lot of time to improve and polish the design. More refined versions of these submachine guns are likely to crop up as other illegal factories continue to crank them out in spite of the law.