Mike's question on gun confiscation

[Kevin]

Mike asked an excellent question about what would actually happen if there was gun confiscation in this country.

My prediction: compliance.

Why:

Suppose having a gun is illegal. You decide to keep yours and defy the law. What do you do with them? You'd need to hide them because you couldn't be sure someone wouldn't blow you in, or someone in your family talked, or got mad during a family conflict and decided to blab to the police to get revenge for a slight, or whatnot. No one could know you have them because you couldn't be sure that you wouldn't be discovered. You couldn't use them even for target practice because of the sound. Any guns would have to be hidden basically forever and not used. And where would you do that? In your house, in the ground - any place you choose has problems.

Then there is the question of ammunition. Where would you get it? Whatever you have is what you will have to end up having for good since ammunition sales are likely to be tracked if a gun confiscation program passes. You'd pretty much be relegated to whatever ammunition you have on hand. And before a gun confiscation law gets passed, you can expect that the feds would be smart enough to track people stocking up. So no more ammo than what you have on hand. Ever.

What would be the point, then, of defying the law? You can't do the one thing a gun is designed to do - shoot. No one can ever know you are, essentially, performing a now criminal act by possessing the gun. You can't hunt or target practice or anything. Basically, you are stuck.

I think there will be some people who defy the law but the vast majority of people would comply with a federal gun confiscation law.

Would there be an uprising? Well, that is catnip for the 2A folks but in reality, it is a fantasy. Too hard to organize, too hard to live in the woods especially in the winter for any organized militia. I just don't see middle-aged men who work all day coming home to talk about raiding government sites at night. The big talk is from a very tiny slice of blowhards that live in their own echo chamber.

So I predict that almost everyone would comply with a gun confiscation, especially since in order for the country to get to that point of creating such a law, there would have to be such generalized revulsion about gun use that it would be very likely that any hold outs would be quickly identified.

[Truckman]

The question is one of "force", presented as a noun, not a verb...Those with guns, and those who approve of gun ownership, are already a "force"...Collectively and politically...The opposition is also a force, mostly vocally and passively...So the question becomes not one of "who will comply," rather one of "who will confiscate"...Living in an area such as New York where incremental laws and regulations concerning firearms have tended to create a herd mentality toward such compliance may indeed have your predicted results as the government authorized force does the house-to-house search to ensure compliance...And in that area, and those like it, it will probably be possible to recruit the necessary personnel to get the job done, even at the risk of the holdouts who will resist violently...

The mentality is different in the free states where firearm ownership is currently and historically less restricted, and more households and businesses can be expected to contain the evil items...Compliance with a confiscatory new law would necessarily require a much larger "force" to conduct the house-to-house search and seizure that would be necessary to ensure full compliance...In such an area as Texas, where gun ownership is seen as a right, already bought and paid for in blood by previous generations, the question becomes not "will you comply," but rather "will you join the force tasked with compliance while knowing the risk"...

The small pockets of resistance in your area to such an unworkable law as you suggest become large groups of fiercely determined defiance, as you find it impossible to recruit or import enough of the population to enforce the confiscation...Your supposition of such an unthinkable law is merely academic, but you knew that......Ben

[Kevin]

No house to house searches would be necessary. Pass the law, provide an amnesty period, and then that's it. Whenever someone actually uses a gun, they get arrested. You are thinking in terms of an event, I'm thinking in terms of a process that happens over time.

Moreover, since the guns cannot actually be used without being arrested, the effect is the same as confiscation - no guns in circulation to the extent we have now. Elimination is not required. Getting guns in circulation down to a small fraction of the present level would suffice, coupled with no one being able to use them legally.

Like I said, armed resistance is catnip but it is a fantasy. Almost no one uses guns even in my very rural part of the state and if you exempt hunting rifles and shotguns, you defang the rest of the population that might resist because no one is willing to shoot it out with the police. That's what we are talking about - shootouts with armed resisters. Not going to happen very often.

No searches necessary, no added danger to the police. Initial turn ins and steady arrest of the holdouts, followed by a second amnesty period when it becomes clear that the hold outs will indeed be arrested and they realize that even if they hold onto their guns for the sake of principle, they can never shoot them again without going to jail.

Overturning Roe was unthinkable, until it wasn't. All it takes is an activist Supreme Court.

And academic issues are interesting - Einstein called them thought experiments. They can define the issues, clarify thinking.

[Truckman]

I'm thinking in terms of a process that happens over time.

That's defined as incrementalism in my mind...The mass defiance creates the event...Anticipation of the event creates the confiscatory force...Go ahead and give the name of the first member of that imaginary force willing to set forth in Texas to collect the contraband......Ben

[Kevin]

You seem to be itching for the Molon Labe moment but it would not be necessary.

No one needs to come collecting guns door to door. The first time anyone pops off a gun that they held back, someone will turn them in. You are surrounded by lots of people that are either neutral or against guns, even in Texas.

Turn in period, followed by some high profile prosecutions, followed by another amnesty period. People will turn them in once they figure out that the feds are serious and they can never safely ever use their guns again or let anyone know they have them.


Any way you slice it, the guns in circulation will not be used again, which is the point. I'm fine with defiance as long as the guns remain unused and unusable. Same difference as them being turned in.

[Truckman]

You seem to be itching for the Molon Labe moment but it would not be necessary.

No one needs to come collecting guns door to door. The first time anyone pops off a gun that they held back, someone will turn them in. You are surrounded by lots of people that are either neutral or against guns, even in Texas.

Turn in period, followed by some high profile prosecutions, followed by another amnesty period. People will turn them in...

I'm not itching for anything, although you seem to be scratching for something that isn't there...All I did was present my hypothetical response to your hypothetical Orwellian statocracy...NYC enacted your suggested solution to criminal violence some time ago...Many of your citizens meekly complied, and yet there still seems to be a criminal element in existence whose activities continue unabated...If it didn't work then and there, how do you propose to make it work nationwide?...Creating a new class of criminal solves nothing; that has been proven already...

Since you think this is a workable idea, maybe you should initiate it by carrying your own arsenal (alarmist news reports always refer to two or more firearms as an arsenal) to the governor's mansion and tell him you're there to get the ball rolling and make room for all those like-minded people lined up behind you......Ben

[Kevin]

Last I checked, there was no wall around NYC, so guns flow into the city from places where laws are more lax about firearms, hence the need for a federal law.

New classes of criminals are being created by Texas every day - don't you folks have a bounty on compliance with your new anti-abortion laws? Maybe that would work - give out a bounty of 10K on anyone turning in someone with a gun. No one with a gun would ever sleep soundly again. You'd have to appreciate the symmetry and the irony, at least.

In Louisiana and Oklahoma, the women getting an abortion will be criminalized if Roe is overturned. They don't have any problems creating a new class of criminals. Other states are looking into making it illegal for their residents to seek an abortion out of state, criminalizing what is lawful behavior in an adjoining state. So I don't think there would be an impediment to creating a new class of criminal in this case. Seems to be the fad these days.

I just don't think it would be very hard to get compliance through attrition. Every guy in a bitter divorce would wonder if his soon-to-be ex is going to tell on him or threaten to in order to get custody of the kids. No father pissing off a rebellious teenager would be safe. No one with kids that might blab to their friends would be safe. You couldn't use them without someone calling the police. You wouldn't be able to buy ammo. They would be hunks of metal that could only get you in trouble and eventually, the defiant would realize that.

No need for me to turn in my guns. I don't have hundreds like some people.

[Independent Voter]

https://stephenhalbrook.com/registra...istration.html

What could go wrong ? .

[Sandman]

No need for confiscation..

Back in 1934 a line was drawn and owning a machine gun. Became a very expensive.

What would happen If the line was updated to include military, assault etc. weapons and the associated magazines. People owning them could keep them, transfer of ownership would be like that of a machine gun..

And people who currently own one would see their collection skyrocket in value..

Because of the skyrocketing value they should become too expensive for street criminals..

[Kevin]

https://stephenhalbrook.com/registra...istration.html

What could go wrong ? .

Oh, please. Godwin's Law reached in 8 posts, must be a new record.

According to a 2004 analysis by Bernard Harcourt, a professor at Columbia University, after the Germany’s defeat in World War I, the Weimar Republic, the government that preceded Hitler’s, passed very stringent gun laws that essentially banned all gun ownership in an attempt to both stabilize the country and to comply with the Treaty of Versailles of 1919.

By the time the Nazi Party came around in the early 1930s, a 1928 gun registration law had replaced the total ban and, instead, created a permit system to own and sell firearms and ammunition.

But Dagmar Ellerbrock, an expert on German gun policies at the Dresden Technical University in Germany, told PolitiFact in 2015 that the order was followed "quite rarely, so that largely, only newly bought weapons became registered. At that time, most men, and many women, still owned the weapons they acquired before or during the first World War."

The Nazis used the records to confiscate guns from their enemies, but Ellerbrock also said the files included very few of the firearms in circulation and that many Jewish people and others still managed to stash away weapons into the late 1930s.

In 1938, the Nazis adopted the German Weapons Act, which "deregulated the acquisition and transfer of rifles and shotguns as well as ammunition," Harcourt wrote.

Under this law, gun restrictions applied only to handguns, permits were extended from one year to three years, and the legal age of purchase was lowered from 20 to 18.

https://www.politifact.com/factcheck...y-did-not-hel/

Or, if you prefer wiki, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_gun_control_argument

This is an easily refutable argument, IV. It is tempting to stay within the familiar comfort of an argument you agree with but I think you need to actively pursue the issue to find the truth rather than re-affirmation.

[Blue74]

Sorry but I just scrolled top the bottom of the thread.

The same thing that I do now. I rarely take then out and they live in quiet places. I see family maybe once in several years and some not for many years. My family has always know not to piss me off because it generally doesn't end well, they jut leave me alone. And living in a very small farm village everyone pretty much mind their own business.

BTW by any law is passed and the attempt to enforce it they will probably belong to a relative, not my problem.