| And that is exactly what the BATF would want you to believe.
Banning these so called junk guns do nothing more than prevent the less fortunate (financially) from getting guns and it is all done in the guise of a public safety thrust. It actually is gun control via discrimination.
Admittedly, most of these guns are of no use in sporting events* as they are nowhere near match grade but the fact is, they make adequate self defense pistols. In a typical self defense scenario only two to three shots will be fired at a distance of less than 2 yards. No matter how inaccurate the gun is, it is still quite trivial to put two rounds in the same 5 inch hole at this range. A five inch circle in a human chest will more or less cover the vital areas.
The government knows that most people are not rich, by making guns expensive (by banning economically priced guns) you just have put an effective method of controlling who can buy firearms.
Take the ruling about the Glock for example, during the time the list for SNS guns were being made, some people wanted a melting point limit to allow a gun to be imported to the USA. Glock pistols use a polyamide frame and will melt before steel but does that make them inferior? Of course not.
I am not a fan of "junk guns", and given the choice, I'd buy European made good brand guns. But there are people out there who don't buy guns because they think they are pretty, they buy them to protect themselves and their homes. These are not gun people, they don't care how it looks just as long as it fires and that at the very least it can put the bullets in a 5 inch group at 5 yards.
Actually the term cheap or junk gun is a misnomer, even the cheapest, junkiest gun is still better made than the cheapest, or junkiest car if you compare reliability and machining. With normal use, even cheap guns can last a lifetime.
Piece it all together and you will see that in one stroke the Clinton administration has just achieved a national ban on "cheap, concealable," generally low-caliber weapons, sometimes known as "Saturday-Night Specials," something that no administration has ever been able to get out of Congress, and which most gun control advocates have never been able to get out of state legislatures. Gun control advocates often claim that these guns are disproportionately used by criminals. (Query: if true, wouldn't we prefer that criminals use cheap, unreliable, inaccurate handguns? Do we really want them to step up to quality, larger caliber firearms?) However, they are often all that poorer citizens who live in dangerous neighborhoods can afford for protection.
* - Except maybe in IDPA Back up Gun class competitions where small, easily concealable guns are required. | 
