Suppose against all odds the 2nd Amendment is repealed and laws are passed and the government goes knocking door-to-door to confiscate all privately owned guns. What is the feared result exactly?
Is is that gun owners would lack self defense, or financial loss (guns are expensive and maybe Uncle Sam wouldn’t compensate enough,) or that there would be no way to resist governmental tyranny?
No snarkiness intended at all - just want to understand. I don’t own guns and probably never will, but want to understand what the main worry is exactly.
People claim that it’s for use against government tyranny but in reality most people who own guns do so because they enjoy them for hunting or recreation and have money invested in it. Looking at other country gun buybacks the UK paid $200 million for 162,000 guns. That’s over $1,200 per gun but if you do the math and see claims that there are more guns than people in the United States you get the figure that even if they raised 10 billion dollars against 300 million guns that’s only $33 a gun, and the average gun price is about $500 not including ammo or accessories. There doesn’t seem an economical way to actually do a gun buyback in this country unless you were to do it slowly piece by piece (first do gun buy backs for all semi-auto rifles with military features) and then work your way down from there, which also wouldn’t happen because people who own guns would see where this was going.
The main worry is that the gun industry will become unprofitable, so they funnel money into the NRA to stoke paranoid conspiracy theories about how everyone needs to buy lots of guns to defend themselves in case the government wants to take their guns.
That is the feared result. Do you want to live in a country that can so easily repeal it’s Bill of Rights and send its police forces into peoples’ homes to take away their personal property. You don’t see that as in and of itself something to fear?
The beauty of gun bans is that they don’t depend on criminals “respecting” them. You don’t need their respect; you just need them to not be able to get guns. Which works in every other nation on the planet.
And the government already out-arms you by a ludicrous degree. Just what use do you think your AR-15 is going to be, when an Abrams drives into your living room?
Mine were on the boat when it sank. Is the thought that agents of the government are going to rip up the floorboards, sort through attic storage, etc to prove there are no munitions hidden?
As far as I can tell, for some folks, their guns are like their security blanket, except to the Nth degree. Take them away, and they won’t just cry, they won’t be able to function at all. Not every gun owner is like this, quite obviously, but in my experience, some are. Their guns are their life. They work to have money to buy guns. They structure their lives around recreational shooting and around fantasies of shooting bad guys. To these folks, even the slightest possibility of “taking their guns away” is a threat to their entire world.
When people talk about the government sending people door-to-door to confiscate guns, I’ve always assumed that every gun owner would deny having any. Right? So, what then?
The OP requires magical thinking to accomplish the premise. Given magic, I will assume that the citizens of the US will appreciate the Government’s efforts and everything will go smoothly.
Oh OK, I see. But posters in this thread have said that they would use the guns against those government agents seeking to take them. That’s a bust.
Just saying you don’t have any. It becomes complicated after that depending on a lot of variables. Like in Waco, where the mailman ‘accidentally’ dropped a mail package and the fully auto parts dropped out of the bag. The government will engineer when it wants to.
Do you actually know anyone who thinks this way? Because apart from Girl Scout Cookies I can’t think of any product I’d buy simply to shore up an industry. As a “Main Worry” as you call it, I’m rather surprised no gun-owners I know even give money to the NRA or its ilk, or plan to open fire on military/paramilitary forces. Mostly people just want to kill some food or do some zen at a range, maybe put some holes in an intruder.
I generally agree with this sentiment. But in the spirit of Devil’s Advocacy, even basic small arms in the hands of locals can harass the bejeezus out of even a mighty and well-armed invading force. Never gonna take out an Abrams or knock a jet out of the sky, but soft targets are still soft targets. Plus, the harassment itself becomes just one more problem for the invader to deal with.
My main worry would be that the government has gotten lazy and is focusing on outlawing certain types of property rather than identifying cultural motivators for violent crimes. There are a lot of strange things that go on in this world, but one thing that NEVER happens is a firearm waking up one day, loading itself, and shooting someone. There is ALWAYS a person, malevolent or careless, behind the gun and working the trigger. I see basically zero call for educating the general population about these items that permeate our society, but I do see a lot of fearful “just get 'em out of here, they scare me!” And I see a lot of people doing time because they felt like they needed to put holes in someone because they had no other ideas for how to handle their anger, desperation, or pride. Yeah, I know guns make it easier to express one’s violent tendencies, but I think it’s better to address those tendencies if only to improve the quality of life of people who are getting that desperate.
As thelurkinghorror implies, the government going door to door to collect weapons tends to show that many of my other Constitutional rights have been compromised as well. Is a judge going to issue a search warrant for every household in America?
I don’t think “see if there are any guns in Shodan’s house” is a particular description of what is to be seized. Further, what is the probable cause to believe I am breaking the law, even a law against gun ownership?
Cocaine is already illegal, but a cop who went to a judge and said “we want to search every house in Detroit to see if they have any crack on the premises” wouldn’t get very far.
Or what if they show up on my doorstep and ask me if I have any guns, and I reply “I am not answering any questions - get off my property”. Will they arrest me and thereby violate my rights under the Fifth Amendment?
It’s not just that the Second Amendment enables us to resist government tyranny. It’s also that the Second acts somewhat like the canary in the coal mine - a government that is willing to ignore that part of the Bill of Rights has to either remove, or ignore, other rights in the Bill of Rights. Or else they don’t get very far.
Naw, Gummint got wise after that. Now they just surround the stronghold and eat Big Macs while the rugged individualists realize they only brought chips & donuts to last a day or two.