[valavaern]

Because no one has the technology to make their own guns and ammo, and making it harder to get something will increase their profits.

There's an ENORMOUS difference between 'hard' and 'impossible to do legally'.

[Aryeonos]

I'm not sure if my sarcasm was evident. But, to recap my points
*Illegal doesn't mean it's off the market, just under the radar, forbidden or not it will continue to exist on the black market
*People will break copyrights and shamelessly reproduce something for a profit if they can, proprietary anything doesn't mean jack squat to the black market.
*You can't trace something you didn't make, law enforcement could trace black market activity, but you can't put your RFID chips into it.
*If it is legal, there will be a grey market on it, but at that point the corps can then still trace things.

It was a bad bad discrepancy in the books, that's it, it needs to be retconned there isn't a special corp strategy logic to it, get off it.