# Confiscation of guns: What do gun owners fear exactly? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 10, 2019, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confiscation-of-guns-what-do-gun-owners-fear-exactly/827510 "2019-01-10T05:53:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2019, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confiscation-of-guns-what-do-gun-owners-fear-exactly/827510/61 "2019-01-10T20:39:50Z")
> [@Ashtura](#): > > Maybe not the first time, but after seeing these heavily armed units going home to home, ransacking the houses, on their T.V. night after night (this would take YEARS), I could see some people starting to. And then I could see those people getting blown away by these heavily armed units, on their T.V. night after night, and then I can see a bunch of people (it wouldn’t take a whole lot) becoming radicalized by these horrible optics to become Tim McVeigh-level terrorists. And those people won’t be using puny firearms to make their statements. So if both sides act like one-dimensional characters in a William Johnstone militiaporn paperback, the revolution will happen? ---
**Author:** ![EscAlaMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/escalamike/32/4177_2.png) [@EscAlaMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EscAlaMike)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2019, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confiscation-of-guns-what-do-gun-owners-fear-exactly/827510/62 "2019-01-10T21:00:00Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Serious question: If the government does go door-to-door confiscating guns, would gun owners _really_ open fire on federal agents? > > Is it worth it to lose one’s life **for the sake of the guns** that one has in one’s closet or basement, etc.? Especially a gun battle that one has no chance of winning? (I’m assuming that federal agents wouldn’t be going alone by themselves, but rather, in a fairly large unit at a time, heavily outnumbering the gun owners at any particular residence.) (Bolding mine) That’s a misconception. No one is willing to die for a gun. It’s the greater principles involved that one may be willing to die for. The perception may be that if guns are outlawed in a society, that society has reached a threshold of tyranny or oppression that is intolerable, justifying lethal resistance. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2019, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confiscation-of-guns-what-do-gun-owners-fear-exactly/827510/63 "2019-01-10T21:27:11Z")
In the meantime I’m finding it interesting that[more Europeans are now buying guns.](https://www.rt.com/news/357002-firearms-europe-spike-permits/) ---
**Author:** ![Lamoral](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lamoral/32/16078_2.png) [@Lamoral](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamoral)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2019, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confiscation-of-guns-what-do-gun-owners-fear-exactly/827510/64 "2019-01-10T21:27:55Z")
> [@Ashtura](#): > > Maybe not the first time, but after seeing these heavily armed units going home to home, ransacking the houses, on their T.V. night after night (this would take YEARS), I could see some people starting to. I think it would take perhaps a week of media coverage and online communication, and then we’d see gun owners converging on individual farms and ranches in groups of 50 to 100, scattered all over the country, gathered for a standoff, waiting to see if the government is willing to call their bluffs. “The government” here means a bunch of young soldiers and/or law enforcement agents, many of whom come from the same cultural milieu that they are being deployed into to confiscate guns, so I’m guessing that in a lot of cases the government _won’t_ be willing to call their bluffs. Which is why I think the whole scheme would probably fail. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2019, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confiscation-of-guns-what-do-gun-owners-fear-exactly/827510/65 "2019-01-10T21:45:55Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Serious question: If the government does go door-to-door confiscating guns, would gun owners _really_ open fire on federal agents? … Serious answer: Yes, some of them would. The smarter ones will not wait until the SWAT team is literally on their porch and the APC parked on their front yard before acting. They’d be a bit more pre-emptive, which is why this sort of thing isn’t usually discussed in polite company. > [@Velocity](#): > > Yes but what’s in it for the gun owners? > > A) Firing at the federal agents leads to only two possible outcomes: Immediate death, or a life as a fugitive. > > B) Whereas giving up your guns just means you won’t have them, and you’ll likely get financial compensation. Not as much as one would like, but better than nothing. > Seems like B wins out over A in every scenario. Winston Churchill once said: > [@](#): > > If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves. The “worse case” involves the asahi’s of the world herding us into camps. The SWAT team on your porch is a “fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival” scenario. Better to fight them at a time and place of our choosing. Better still would be to not fight them (at least in the literal sense) at all and just vote Dems out of power. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2019, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confiscation-of-guns-what-do-gun-owners-fear-exactly/827510/66 "2019-01-10T21:49:46Z")
> [@Inigo\_Montoya](#): > > But really, collecting the guns is a fool’s errand–it would take too many agents and too much coordination & monitoring to make sure stuff’s not getting hidden, stashed, moved around to already “cleaned” areas, etc. Just ban the sale of ammunition and the guns turn into mere curiosities in fairly short order. You have no concept of how many rounds of ammunition are already in private hands, do you? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2019, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confiscation-of-guns-what-do-gun-owners-fear-exactly/827510/67 "2019-01-10T21:57:40Z")
> [@bump](#): > > In reality, it would likely be a lot of law abiding types turning in all their guns, some chunk turning some in, but not all and some turning none in at all. No. By definition all law-abiding people would turn in their guns if there was a law prohibiting guns. Anybody who kept a gun after that would no longer be law abiding. > [@bump](#): > > And in that last group, I’d imagine that criminals would be disproportionately represented. Why WOULD a criminal turn their guns in? They’re now armed better than most citizens, and have less to fear and more to intimidate with. The same process that stops other crimes. After you enact the law, you enforce it. The illegal owning of guns would be stopped by the same means that we stop the illegal robbing of banks, the illegal sale of drugs, and the illegal committing of murder. Sure, there are criminals who break all of these law. But that doesn’t mean the laws are pointless. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2019, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confiscation-of-guns-what-do-gun-owners-fear-exactly/827510/68 "2019-01-10T22:49:02Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > No. By definition all law-abiding people would turn in their guns if there was a law prohibiting guns. Anybody who kept a gun after that would no longer be law abiding. Currently law-abiding then. Substitute in “rule following” if you prefer. My point was that there’s a lot of people who would turn them in because they were told to by the authorities, a lot that would “interpret” that law creatively, and a fair number who would flat out ignore it. > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The same process that stops other crimes. After you enact the law, you enforce it. The illegal owning of guns would be stopped by the same means that we stop the illegal robbing of banks, the illegal sale of drugs, and the illegal committing of murder. > > Sure, there are criminals who break all of these law. But that doesn’t mean the laws are pointless. You’re just adding one more law that people will ignore; it would probably be a lot like Prohibition- some people would quit drinking, some would cut back, and some would brew their own beer, distill their own bathtub gin, and smuggle liquor from all parts of the globe, despite there having been laws against all those things. And like I said earlier (math corrected), collecting 99% of guns would still leave 3.5 million hanging around, all in the hands of non-law abiding sorts, and that number would include pretty much EVERY gun possessed by criminals right now. So I’m not sure what that would accomplish exactly; it probably wouldn’t mitigate gun crime all that much. It didn’t enact that much change in the UK > **[Dunblane massacre 20 years on: how Britain rewrote its gun laws – and the...](http://theconversation.com/dunblane-massacre-20-years-on-how-britain-rewrote-its-gun-laws-and-the-challenge-it-faces-now-55896)** > > The 1996 shooting at a Scottish primary school had a lasting impact on UK gun control. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2019, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confiscation-of-guns-what-do-gun-owners-fear-exactly/827510/69 "2019-01-10T22:58:38Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Again, I’m surely projecting, as as non-gun-owner, but if I had Glocks and Berettas in my basement and federal ATF agents come knocking and say, “We are acting under lawful orders, surely you’ve heard of recent Law XXX that calls for the confiscation of firearms, now here we are to offer you fair court-ordained compensatory value of $ \_\_\_\_\_ for your guns, now please produce them” The odds of the ATF offering $ as compensation for confiscated weapons is about as low as the odds of such confiscation ever occurring in this country. I once read an article in a survivalist magazine about how gun owners should prepare for eventual confiscation by hiding extra weapons (i.e. burying them in such a way as to preserve them from rusting, thwart ground-penetrating radar\* etc.). A fly in the ointment (aside from not having weaponry ready to hand) is finding the buried guns later on. There was one such owner mentioned in the article who actually had lost track of one or more buried guns but was optimistic about finding them eventually. 🙂 I guess you’d need a map with detailed coordinates - and of course you’d have to hide that securely as well… \*pro tip from the article - bury your guns in a junkyard or auto graveyard, since all that metal theoretically will make it impossible to detect a few guns. Still, you’d have to be confident the junkyard will still be there years later when you need your guns, instead of being turned into a Superfund reclamation site or the site of a giant Hindu temple. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2019, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confiscation-of-guns-what-do-gun-owners-fear-exactly/827510/70 "2019-01-10T23:03:11Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > 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? For the people who believe this, the answer is yes. They also seem to have no qualms about bragging online that they have them, not seeming to realize that these posts can be easily traced, and if you do that on social media, when the time comes, I guess they’ll just have to get on their knees to pray and kiss their asses goodbye. IMNSHO, those people are precisely the ones who shouldn’t have guns, but what can we do if they get them on the black market, which some of them readily admit they do? (I post on another board that has a very small but extremely vocal minority who do and believe this, and they also do things like homeschool their kids so authorities don’t know about it.) ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2019, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confiscation-of-guns-what-do-gun-owners-fear-exactly/827510/71 "2019-01-10T23:05:39Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > 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. Ammosexuals are an interesting breed, and not in a good way. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2019, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confiscation-of-guns-what-do-gun-owners-fear-exactly/827510/72 "2019-01-10T23:11:53Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > “The people in this country that have guns”? > If a law is passed restricting gun access to those of the Muslim religion will patriots rise up with their weapons to defend them? The kind of people I think you’re talking about probably would. Here’s another angle: There are some areas, small towns in the Deep South of course, where gun ownership was made mandatory, “and crime went way down.” Really? Really? REALLY?!?!? How would that be enforced, and what would the penalties be for violators? ---
**Author:** ![Bear\_Nenno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bear_nenno/32/3358_2.png) [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2019, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confiscation-of-guns-what-do-gun-owners-fear-exactly/827510/73 "2019-01-10T23:11:54Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > It’s called enforcing a law that had been democratically passed for the benefit of We the People. Why would you fear it? Perhaps it’s something else that you fear. You seriously wouldn’t be concerned with a repeal of the 1st of the 4th amendment? You would just accept that it was “democratically passed for the benefit of We the People”? No fear or concern for what the government might be capable of if somehow they managed to ban free speech or ban due process? ---
**Author:** ![Bear\_Nenno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bear_nenno/32/3358_2.png) [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2019, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confiscation-of-guns-what-do-gun-owners-fear-exactly/827510/74 "2019-01-10T23:15:14Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > We live in that country now and have been since 1789. There has always been legal means to amend or repeal any portion of the Constitution. Yes, and after more than 200 hundred years, we haven’t touched the Bill of Rights. While there remains a legal process for taking those rights away, they’ve endured over 200 years. You would not be concerned if those rights–any of them–were repealed? ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2019, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confiscation-of-guns-what-do-gun-owners-fear-exactly/827510/75 "2019-01-10T23:16:58Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > There are a lot of people posting that kind of brave stuff anonymously on the Internet. They’re also the same kind of people who go on social media and say that they have concealed carry, in case someone else pulls out a gun and starts shooting. My guess is that were this ever to actually happen to them, they’d run away as fast as possible while simultaneously wetting their pants. I actually told this to a former co-worker on Facebook. :dubious: A man at the Tucson shooting who had a legal concealed carry almost shot the wrong person because he saw a man holding a rifle, and then decided not to because he wasn’t 100% certain that man was the shooter. And he wasn’t; he had wrestled the shooter to the ground and grabbed his rifle. And then there are people who die by “friendly fire.” (What a bullshit term!) The officer who died in the nightclub shooting lost his life this way, which is proof that bullets don’t know who you are. > **[Officer killed during Borderline shooting died from friendly rifle fire](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/officer-killed-during-borderline-shooting-died-friendly-fire-n945321)** > > "I can tell you that most body armor worn by municipal police in this country is not capable of stopping rifle ammunition," said Ventura County Sheriff BIll Ayub. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2019, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confiscation-of-guns-what-do-gun-owners-fear-exactly/827510/76 "2019-01-10T23:22:00Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The same process that stops other crimes. After you enact the law, you enforce it. The illegal owning of guns would be stopped by the same means that we stop the illegal robbing of banks, the illegal sale of drugs, and the illegal committing of murder. > > Sure, there are criminals who break all of these law. But that doesn’t mean the laws are pointless. Lots of people are saying this about gun-free zones, but the reason they exist is this: If you DO have one, and get caught one way or another, the penalties are higher. That’s it. ---
**Author:** ![Bear\_Nenno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bear_nenno/32/3358_2.png) [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2019, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confiscation-of-guns-what-do-gun-owners-fear-exactly/827510/77 "2019-01-10T23:29:32Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > It’s called enforcing a law that had been democratically passed for the benefit of We the People. Why would you fear it? Perhaps it’s something else that you fear. Suppose Trump’s base voters came out in force over the next couple elections, empowering some of the most conservative zealots this country has to offer. Then, they decide that they’re so fed up with “fake news” that they’re going to go ahead and repeal freedom of the press. Would you be comfortable with that? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2019, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confiscation-of-guns-what-do-gun-owners-fear-exactly/827510/78 "2019-01-10T23:40:55Z")
> [@bump](#): > > So I’m not sure what that would accomplish exactly; it probably wouldn’t mitigate gun crime all that much. I’m not saying the heavy gun control laws would end all gun-related crimes. But let’s face it, the Second Amendment hasn’t ended all gun-related crimes either, has it? If gun ownership was a perfect solution, then everyone would own a gun and no crimes would ever occur because everyone would have the means to defend themselves. That’s obviously not the reality. So private gun ownership is one attempt to prevent crimes which doesn’t provide a perfect solution to the problem. And gun control laws are a different attempt to prevent crimes which wouldn’t provide a perfect solution to the problem. Now that we’ve acknowledged that neither approach is perfect, can we compare them and see which one produces better results? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2019, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confiscation-of-guns-what-do-gun-owners-fear-exactly/827510/79 "2019-01-10T23:51:01Z")
> [@Bear\_Nenno](#): > > Yes, and after more than 200 hundred years, we haven’t touched the Bill of Rights. While there remains a legal process for taking those rights away, they’ve endured over 200 years. You would not be concerned if those rights–any of them–were repealed? > [@Bear\_Nenno](#): > > Suppose Trump’s base voters came out in force over the next couple elections, empowering some of the most conservative zealots this country has to offer. Then, they decide that they’re so fed up with “fake news” that they’re going to go ahead and repeal freedom of the press. Would you be comfortable with that? I think it’s a circular argument to say that the rights in the Bill of Rights are important because they’re in the Bill of Rights. No, I wouldn’t be happy if freedom of speech and freedom of the press were abolished. But that’s because I think those particular rights are important in and of themselves not because they’re in the Bill of Rights. I don’t attach the same importance to my constitutional right to have a jury trial in lawsuits involving property worth more than twenty dollars. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2019, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confiscation-of-guns-what-do-gun-owners-fear-exactly/827510/80 "2019-01-11T00:02:51Z")
First of all, to actually repeal the Second Amendment there would have to be an enormous shift in American society, with gun owners reduced to a negligible minority and the overwhelming supermajority of Americans being willing to actively support the measure. This isn’t as implausible as relegalizing slavery but it sort of begs the question: if that many people wanted to ban guns and that few people were left who didn’t, guns would be banned. What gun owners fear is that a clique of strident social engineers will seek to impose their vision of what American society ought to be on the public: by spurring a moral panic against guns, by demonizing gun owners, by a steady trickle of precedents that eat away at legal protection for owning guns. A formal constitutional amendment would be honest and forthright by comparison. If what was clearly at the time intended to be a protection for a fundamental right can be interpreted out of existence, what about the rest of the Bill of Rights? So why would gun owners hate to see guns banned? For starters self-defense is a legitimate concern. The muzzle of a gun is a sight that deters all but the most violent and/or insane from attacking the gun’s holder. Even if you postulate “but what if the bad people have guns too” firearms still favor the outnumbered, who push come to shove can use them to put a higher price on their lives. Robbers, rapists and thugs want easy victims, not a fight for their lives or a murder conviction if they do use deadly force and are then caught. As for the tyrannical government argument: history is not in the least encouraging about what happens when the common people are forbidden to possess weapons and their possession and use restricted to an elite class of government enforcers. The people with weapons have inevitably told those without “shut up and do what you’re told”. Has modern liberal society somehow transcended this? We’d like to think so, but a lot of the world isn’t modern or liberal. If nothing else, the private possession of guns keeps the government (less un-)honest. Banning guns might not mean a tyranny but a tyranny would have to ban guns; and no government that would _have_ to ban guns just to remain in power could be called a democracy. Think of guns as the canary in the coal mine. The canary keepers are leery of being told “Oh we don’t need those any more; our modern ventilation systems will never allow a dangerous gas buildup”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confiscation-of-guns-what-do-gun-owners-fear-exactly/827510.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confiscation-of-guns-what-do-gun-owners-fear-exactly/827510.md?page=5)