'AK-47 Bandit' robs banks all over Western US

[The Magistrate]

24. Try Entering one Sometime, Sir

The prohibition line does not work well, in this instance, unless you are talking pure con work. Selling cheap home-made hootch as imported scotch is a relatively easy thing to maintain as you still are selling the active ingredient in adequate proportion. Making the quality of a mechanism drop, and doing so in a way that brings increased profit to the seller, would be trickier. Of course, the market could operate to shift people to a lesser grade of fire-arm, but that would carry my point, rather than yours; people would be buying something other than 'assault weapon' knock-offs, but paying a price closer to the former's formerly legal price than they would have before.

Bank robbery actually is often a fairly amateur endeavor, especially bank robbery of the 'guy walks in, says this is a robbery' sort. It is not a safe assumption a person who does this has learned the ins and outs of dealing in a cut-throat market where the one thing you cannot do if a deal goes bad is call the cops.