They probably still are - this is what happens when you treat your workforce like peasants. Mind you i'd hope that a pistol would be harder to get wrong. Mind you the Daewoo ought to be okay - S.Korean manufacturing standards are generally a lot higher , and they make the standard side arm for the ROK and the S.K Police. Thing is would they be able to keep that standard of quality control and manufacture while driving manufacturing costs down to get under $100 rrp
I had another thought about capitalism. Besides being forced to compete with foreign markets, guns would probably be sold in a lot more stores. Gun manufacturers would probably create a lower end line of weapons specifically for those. For analogy: I have a Stanley hammer that I bought from Home Depot, it cost me about $50. My wife likes to help me build sometimes so we got her a Stanley hammer from Walmart for like $12. It works, I trust it's safe, and I know it works for her, but it's lower quality that's mine. That's fine for someone who casually does things like that. But since I like to build, I didn't mind getting a great one for myself. I think guns would be the same way, gun shops will sell high end guns to enthusiasts and hunters, Walmart would sell functioning, but stripped down guns to the masses. Probably all except the chamber and barrel would be hard plastic.
If you want to estimate the cost of a gun produced to be cheap, consider what goes into a simple single-shot weapon: a pipe a cap for the pipe that can be removed to load it a nail to serve as a firing pin a piece of metal to strike the nail, serving as a hammer a spring to drive the hammer a lever to hold back the hammer until you want to fire something to hold all the pieces together Total BOM cost of this Improvised Firearm will be a few dollars. Is it accurate? Enough for close range use. Note that you can use shotgun shells in the above. Want multiple shots? Build several of them, or a multi-barrel version. So why are guns expensive? Well, accuracy, durability, and dependability don't come cheap, plus the expected liability costs for a malfunction (a lawsuit) is high. But more importantly, in the U.S. the manufacture of firearms is severely limited by the Federal Government, so demand outstrips supply. There's a positive feedback effect there too - since who can manufacture firearms is limited, the manufacturers will tend to make them more expensive than they need to be - why sell a $X gun when you can sell a $X*5 gun instead, and the increase in price won't have a significant effect on the number of sales because no one 3else makes a sub-$X*5 gun? This is related to why Intel can sell computer processors for $100 that cost less than $10 to make.
It's worth mentioning: Cell phones are really expensive, but most people in the United States have one. In a world where guns are a necessary part of operational, day-to-day life, it's not unreasonable to assume that people would just carry around one more expensive tool with them. Rich people would get the big, fancy, high end models, poorer people would either use older designs, hand-me-downs, or whatever the cheapest 'New' design is.
And some of the new ones, with all the bells and whistles, would turn out to be Saturday Night Specials in the end <looks askance at Samsung>
Its also worth mentioning that most people buy cell phones as part of their billing package not by laying out a big load of cash in one hit - may be the OPs Govt needs to offer a a hire purchase scheme for guns ETA or have a bounty scheme on the weird little monsters - like i believe some states used to on gophers , though the bounty would need to be higher in order to reflect the danger involved
What about a slingshot? There is this German guy (https://www.youtube.com/user/JoergSprave) who makes some pretty lethal slingshots, and slingshot based weaponry. I know I just duct taped Rambo and Dennis the Menace with that one, but it could work.
I live in Maine and grew up in Alaska. I've noticed that there's this culture of sharing guns. Now I grew up hunting for dinner, so it didn't really bother me, but my college friend (from NYC) noticed and pointed it out. Basically neighbors share guns all the time. I've seen older folk trade their guns for fresh venison. So I don't know you could explain how guns became a necessity so people began trading things for guns.