before pistols were practical for anything more than honor duels.
This is false. According to NYPD data, 81% of police shootings take place at a range of under nine feet. Even for law enforcement officers, who are trained, wary, and expecting trouble, conflict escalates quickly and at very close range. For civilians it's even worse (there's far less data available, but the commonly-cited stat is 6 feet.) This is a social reality rather than a technological one; most of the famous Wild West gunfights, if you look them up, took place over a card table. As defensive weapons go, the pistols of the 1700s were more than sufficient at a range of 6-9 feet. For that matter, so is a cavalry saber. The saber - a common weapon of the period - cannot jam, fail to return to battery, double-feed, or be pushed out of battery by contact, like modern pistols. Pistols require a direct hit on the CNS or heart to achieve rapid incapacitation whereas a saber can inflict grevious wounds to extremities that will achieve much the same effect - to say nothing of the torso. The Second Amendment adresses "arms;" comparing only "fire"arms between an era where they were not nearly as dominant a weapon is fallacious and mislesding.
Hell, the long-guns generally weren't even rifles, they were smoothbore, muzzle-loading muskets, and only suitable for mass-volley.
The extremely high ratio of true German-style hunting rifles in the 13 colonies, as compared to mainland Europe, is a well-known fact that has been storied in song and legend. Hardly any account of the Revolution fails to mention the impressive accuracy of the rebels - and their rifles. Regardless, muskets were more common because their accuracy was just fine for shooting a nosy bear - or uninvited guest - at 10 or 20 yards. As useful as the saber was, even a terrible smoothbore musket has a longer reach. And aside from that - they were relatively cheap.
Each weapon was individually produced by a gunsmithing shop, and all parts had to be custom worked to make the weapon function. As a consequence, each weapon was very, very expensive and required service that was itself expensive.
Quite false. The advent of the flint-lock allowed for high reliability, enough to make the musket a primary weapon (unlike the old match-lock) and rather cheap and efficient manufacture (unlike the complex, spring-wound and delicate wheel-lock.) Otherwise entire armies could never have been equipped. A breech-loading rifle design was available in that era, capable of much greater fire rates than muzzleloaders, but no nation could afford to equip an entire army with them. Muskets were, by definition, affordable weapons. In addition, the traveling garb of the period (long coats for protection from the elements while walking or on horseback) allowed for easy concealment of suprisingly bulky weaponry.
The rest of your flawed reasoning and fallacious statements are quite contemporary in nature and reflect a debate I'm sure every Slashdot reader is familiar with, so there's little reason to discuss it. Your poor grasp of history, however, is aggrevating.
Our druglords buy uncontrolled firearms (both "regular" and high-power) in the USA, and use them here. So, yes, I do have basis for complaining on the status quo.
Multiple American media outlets made this claim loudly and regularly until the "Fast and Furious" scandal you mentioned broke, which revealed that guns were only crossing the border because the BATFE wanted them to - they specifically forbade gun dealers who were reporting the obvious straw purchasers from refusing them sales so they could carry out their "tracking" scheme. Furthermore, the drugs that fuel the violence and corruption in Mexico come up from South America, and South American manufactured weapons - to say nothing of foreign-manufactured AK-47s and similar weapons - often come with them. Between Central/South America and the United States, which one do you think has a more porous border (by land and sea,) less effective law enforcement and more corrupt local governments?
If you think the system is working, ask someone who's waiting for a prompt.