Government taking your guns - really worth it for gun owners to die over?

Great Debates
1

Splicing several spin-offs of recent threads together:
Say the Democrats issue a national-emergency and try to confiscate all privately owned guns. Plenty of gun owners brag, on social media, that the government agents will be “taught a lesson” when they try to take their guns away.

The fantasy seems to go something like this: ATF agents, SWAT and cops show up on the doorstep, say, “Give us them guns” and the gun owners, already perched in various positions for optimal sniping and avoidance of cross-fire, open up a hail of gunfire that kills half the agents and sends the other half fleeing, and then a Gadsden flag rises to the top of a flagpole.

Of course, real-life confiscation probably wouldn’t happen that way. But is that **really **what gun owners would do - open fire on cops coming to take their guns? There is everything to lose and nothing to gain in doing so. It’s not like the government will just leave you alone after you open fire and kill their agents; they’ll just redouble their efforts to come after you since you are now a marked FBI fugitive.

2

Would rabble-rousers in Concord & Lexington really open fire on the King’s men coming to take their guns? There is everything to lose and nothing to gain in doing so. It’s not like the government will just leave you alone after you open fire and kill their agents; they’ll just redouble their efforts to come after you …

I suspect an attempt at door-to-door gun confiscation across the whole country would be met with some violent resistance, which may not take the precise form the gun-grabbers imagine / hope it will.

3

This is not so much a national emergency declared; it is a coup. So yes, people would be shooting, not because they wanted to defend their guns, but because they wanted to defend the Republic.

There are a lot more private gun owners than there are ATF agents or cops, especially since not all the ATF agents and cops are going to obey the government. So no, they are not going to let us alone even after being defeated. But we also are not going to let them alone.

The basic question of the OP seems to be “if there were an armed uprising in the US, would private gun owners join in?” ISTM that the obvious answer is Yes.

OK, the government has tanks and missiles and whatnot. Those tanks and missiles are not all going to be under the control of the Democrats who issued this “national emergency”.

Is freedom worth dying for? That’s a question everyone has to answer for themselves. Lots of people are going to say Yes It Is, and those people are not going to go quietly, and the other side is going to pay a price no matter what.

Regards,
Shodan

4

I have five pistols, all of which were purchased at gun stores after NICS background checks. I’m going to fight the hypothetical here and suggest that the scenario envisioned in the OP (gun confiscation based on an executive order) would be stopped by courts pretty much instantly.

If the SCOTUS were to determine that the 2nd amendment does not confer an individual right, and a federal or state law were to then authorize the confiscation of my guns, I would hand them over. Unhappily.

In the scenario in the OP, I would be sorely tempted to hide my guns. I sure as hell wouldn’t shoot anyone who was trying to carry out the order.

5

Of course, just responding to this thread means the NSA has logged your IP number and you will be among the first rounded up after the emergency is declared.

6

I’m really not sure what this kind of silly utterly unrealistic hypothetical is supposed to teach us.

Here’s a more relevant hypothetical:

Gun owners often advocate respect for the Constitution, since it is currently interpreted as protecting their their right to own guns (let’s set aside the question of whether that’s a fair reading of the Constitution).

In a hypothetical world where public sentiment moved so far that (say) 75% of people favored banning most private gun ownership, a sufficiently large majority to pass whatever legislation is required - including a constitutional amendment if necessary - would most gun owners continue to respect the democratic process, the Constitution and the rule of law?

7

This thread probably doesn’t merit the NSA’s attention. Similar threads on the HTF or AR15.com may, but trying to round up thousands of people for posting something hypothetical online is going to provoke a similar response. People would start killing feds.

8

As a thought experiment for the non-gun-owners: Would you continue to respect the democratic process if public opinion shifted so far that laws were passed to imprison whatever race / gender / class / other classification describes you?

9

Government taking your guns - really worth it for gun owners to die over?

It was worth it for David Koresh. And that made it worth it for Timothy McVeigh.

10

I’m an electric car owner. I really like my electric car. If the government banned electric cars, I’d be pissed and politically motivated more than ever. I would not, however, resist the ban violently.

That seems like a closer analogy than the government rounding up and imprisoning Jewish people.

11

Who exactly are the people that are going to be going door to door to take my guns? The local police officers that live in my community, that I go shooting and hunting with? Who have private weapons of their own that they would not give up either? How will the government find our guns? Some were gifts that are not connected to me. Some were from purchases from private parties. Few of the guns that I have are registered in my name at time of purchase, and there is no national database to find all the guns people own. Are they coming for the ones that the government may have records for or are they searching every thing I have to find any possible guns?

It is a fantasy that the military or law enforcement people are going to turn against the public, the people that they live among and with, to invade the homes of citizens to take these guns. Just how long do you think it will take for the door to door SWAT teams to disarm the US? The commonly referenced number of 300 million guns in the US is at least as old as the Clinton administration.

This link to the FBI NICS page that records background checks, not purchases but the background checks are a pretty good indication of purchases, shows about 25 million more guns each year since then.

https://www.nicsezcheckfbi.gov/

They ain’t coming.

12

That’s true. And I don’t see much of a clamor for such an act. The most I hear are proposed restrictions on new purchases to certain people or for certain types of weapons. And even those efforts are usually unsuccessful. I’d say the hypothetical round up of guns is just that, hypothetical.

13

This is bizarre, there is no equivalence whatsoever. What you suggest violates natural moral principles and fundamental universal human rights. Gun laws, on the other hand, are entirely arbitrary - and most civilized societies are much more restrictive.

It does grant some insight, however. Based on this bizarre comparison, your belief in the right to own guns is presumably not rooted in any Constitutional right - you see gun rights as natural universal moral principles?

14

Well, there are levels here. Is a gun, per se, worth losing your life for? I’d argue that no object, be it a gun or a sports car is worth dying over. Obviously MMV. However, conceptually, we are talking about taking away a right by fiat. Put a different way, if the Republicans decided, by fiat, to declare a national emergency and ban free speech, especially those organizations who said mean things about Trump, is that worth dying for? It’s just speech after all. I’d argue that, yes…this would be worth dying over (obviously this is all fantasy and declaring NE doesn’t work this way).

If, through our process, we as a people decide to remove the 2nd Amendment and then make guns illegal, that’s one thing. I’d go along with that, as long as the process was used. I’d do the same, more reluctantly, for free speech. If we were, collectively, stupid enough to re-write or vacate the 1st then I’d probably be thinking about alternative places to live. However, if the government decided, by fiat, to just do it without going through the process, no matter which Amendment we are talking about, I’d have a serious issue with that…one that I think you could justifiably lay your (well, my) life on the line for. Again, MMV, but I think this is a case where if you believe in our system and the process, that no matter what your feelings on the Amendment in question, you need to fight to defend that. Then you can turn around an, through the process, fight to get rid of what you don’t like. Convince enough of your fellow citizens and there you go.

15

Public opinion was once in favor of owning other people. Did the public opinion make that right?

16

No. Our sense of fundamental moral principles and universal human rights has improved as civilization has matured.

The real question is - do you believe that the right to freely own guns (something along the lines of the current American model) is as fundamental and natural a human right as the idea that slavery is wrong, that people cannot be property? Do you believe that the natural human rights of (say) British citizens are being violated by British gun laws?

17

Who cares? I don’t even know what a ‘natural’ human right IS. I don’t believe they exist. What I know, however, is that in the US we have certain rights in our Constitution. We also have a process for removing or modifying those rights. That’s what humans have…constructs. Because ‘natural’ rights are a fantasy. And in our process, if some group decided to remove one or more of those rights by fiat, that’s worth fighting and even dying for. IMHO. YMMV and all that. But this discussion about ‘natural’ rights is meaningless.

18

Well, it’s clear from the conversation that some people don’t accept that their gun rights could fairly be taken away by in a hypothetical scenario where public opinion were strong enough to make a (perfectly legal) change to the Constitution. Apparently they believe that their right to own guns rests on something more fundamental than the Constitution.

I take it that you do not agree with them - that you would abide by a change to the Constitution to restrict gun ownership?

19

Hooboy. I’m from the deep south. If I’ve known one patriotic gun owner, I’ve known…:eek:

The vast majority of these people would like you to believe they would. I’m reminded of a Humphrey Bogart line, “The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.” Yeah, it’s a bit harsh for the situation but the idea is there. If you really know you aren’t going to get into a life or death standoff with law enforcement, but you want everybody to think you would, use lots of very colorful language. It might work.

In our time we’ve seen one such incident; the Koresh compound. You can see in a video a high-velocity automatic weapon, presumably an AK-47, being fired through a wall at a female ATF agent trying to crouch on a rooftop adjacent to the wall. She was hit, then Koresh claimed it was self-defense. The same group of vocal gun owners drag out Ruby Ridge, and the FBI sniper shooting through a door hitting and killing Randy Weaver’s wife while she held an infant. It’s okay for the Koreshites to shoot through walls. That’s self-defense. An overzealous sniper training on a running man and firing just as he disappears behind an open door, that’s an egregious over-reach of governmental power signaling a desire to confiscate every gun in the country.

In a “We the people” situation, we the voters have to decide who exactly we’re going to listen to, and what exactly we are going to allow to intimidate us into inaction. The NRA crowd is largely intent on speaking scarily enough to create inaction, making it unnecessary to demonstrate they really have no intention of sacrificing their lives in a firefight over an antiquated interpretation of a repealable amendment. “As long as those communist socialist fascist lefties trying to take our guns don’t know that…”

Any FBI or ATF agent will tell you, there will always be some who are that crazy. They will also tell you to allow them to deal with that, and don’t let it paralyze you. What’s right is right. As soon as the gun nuts are able to finish the amendment they like to quote so often “…in order to maintain a well-regulated militia…” we can stop questioning their veracity. They won’t, so we won’t have to give them the benefit of that doubt.

FYI: We have a well-regulated militia. It’s called The National Guard. We now provide them with weapons, so the requirement for them to bring their own guns should something happen no longer exists. This means we can repeal that amendment with no consequence other than listening to them whine. They whine about so much and are constantly whining about this anyway, it’s inconsequential either way…aside from the shooting victim roles being sharply reduced. We what people?

Any person threatening armed insurrection if they don’t want to obey the law is threatening sedition. If you want a conspiracy, there’s one for you. Yes, U.S. law accepts the concept of a conspiracy of one.

20

Oy. How can you not believe something exists if you don’t know what it is??? Ignorance never won an argument.

Natural rights do exist, and you’d better know what they are, as they’re the foundation of that carefully-constructed Constitution you’re so proud of. They’re the rights all people have simply by virtue of being born, rights that governments can deny but can’t take away. Sound familiar?

What does this have to do with the Constitution?

The whole purpose of government is to ensure you have and keep these rights.

Dismissing what you don’t understand can lead to shooting yourself in the foot, so to speak.