# Government taking your guns - really worth it for gun owners to die over? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 18, 2019, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-taking-your-guns-really-worth-it-for-gun-owners-to-die-over/829788 "2019-02-18T20:27:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2019, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-taking-your-guns-really-worth-it-for-gun-owners-to-die-over/829788/21 "2019-02-18T23:05:05Z")
> [@Pithily\_Effusive](#): > > … 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. … Is this just bluster / hyperbole or intended as a literal claim? ---
**Author:** ![Littleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ccd318/32.png) [@Littleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Littleman)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2019, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-taking-your-guns-really-worth-it-for-gun-owners-to-die-over/829788/22 "2019-02-18T23:15:28Z")
> [@Pithily\_Effusive](#): > > 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. As soon as you are able to quote the second amendment correctly, and realize the interpretations off it happened in 2008,2010, and 2016 instead of in antiquity then perhaps you will at least be speaking from a semi educated perspective. One more thing, the national guard is now part of the federal selected reserve, no longer a militia. States recognize that and the ones who’s constitutions call for a militia have other organizations named as their official militia, for instance I believe Ohio’s is called the OMR. Assuming you could get the second amendment repealed, or even re-interpreted in SCOTUS , now you just have a lack of the Constitution addressing private gun ownership. Many state Constitutions are much more explicit in giving gun rights to citizens. I believe right around 30 of them in fact. So you’d need another amendment overriding the states. ---
**Author:** ![Littleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ccd318/32.png) [@Littleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Littleman)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2019, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-taking-your-guns-really-worth-it-for-gun-owners-to-die-over/829788/23 "2019-02-18T23:24:56Z")
And now you are into the “long train of abuses and userpations” The Constitution actually calls it a right even a duty to overthrow a government which is making it a point to systematically violate your rights. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2019, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-taking-your-guns-really-worth-it-for-gun-owners-to-die-over/829788/24 "2019-02-18T23:31:06Z")
> [@Littleman](#): > > And now you are into the “long train of abuses and userpations” > > The Constitution actually calls it a right even a duty to overthrow a government which is making it a point to systematically violate your rights. I think you mean the Declaration of Independence. > [@](#): > > Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. The U.S. Constitution says no such thing. ---
**Author:** ![Littleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ccd318/32.png) [@Littleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Littleman)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2019, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-taking-your-guns-really-worth-it-for-gun-owners-to-die-over/829788/25 "2019-02-18T23:35:12Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > I think you mean the Declaration of Independence. > The U.S. Constitution says no such thing. Yes thank you ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2019, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-taking-your-guns-really-worth-it-for-gun-owners-to-die-over/829788/26 "2019-02-18T23:40:24Z")
I didn’t mean the thread to be a 2nd Amendment debate (we have had dozens of those threads) but rather, was asking for insight into the minds of gun owners. What % of gun owners are indeed diehard enough that they would open fire on government agents trying to take their guns away? 30%? (Yes, again, confiscation almost certainly wouldn’t happen in that method, but if it did, how would they react?) ---
**Author:** ![Littleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ccd318/32.png) [@Littleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Littleman)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2019, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-taking-your-guns-really-worth-it-for-gun-owners-to-die-over/829788/27 "2019-02-18T23:42:37Z")
It is State Constitutions which re-iterate that right from the DOI, often placing less constraints on it ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2019, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-taking-your-guns-really-worth-it-for-gun-owners-to-die-over/829788/28 "2019-02-18T23:43:16Z")
> [@nelliebly](#): > > 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. If I drop you in the middle of the jungle, by yourself and with only your ‘natural rights’, what does that get you? ‘Natrual rights’, like all rights, are a human construct. Outside of human society, they don’t exist. I DO understand what they are. I am simply pointing out reality. In the context of this discussion, they are meaningless, but the Constitutional rights are not. If you live in the CCP and assert your ‘natural rights’, know what that gets you? A quick trip to a detention center and probably carved up for parts. You are worth whatever the CCP can get for your organs. Which is neither here nor there either, and as meaningless as trying to assert ‘natural rights’ in this discussion. In the context of the OP, it’s nor Constitutional rights that are under discussion, and someone trying to remove them by fiat. In that same context, whatever you want to fantasize about ‘natural rights’ wrt the law or the Constitution, any of the Amendments can be modified or removed if enough people agree. That is the way our system is supposed to work. ---
**Author:** ![Littleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ccd318/32.png) [@Littleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Littleman)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2019, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-taking-your-guns-really-worth-it-for-gun-owners-to-die-over/829788/29 "2019-02-18T23:50:45Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > I didn’t mean the thread to be a 2nd Amendment debate (we have had dozens of those threads) but rather, was asking for insight into the minds of gun owners. What % of gun owners are indeed diehard enough that they would open fire on government agents trying to take their guns away? 30%? > (Yes, again, confiscation almost certainly wouldn’t happen in that method, but if it did, how would they react?) Hypothetically and barring the coup status and state Constitutions and all that other stuff. Probably not a huge amount, enough to be in the news everyday … possibly enough to have a Colorado weed type scenario where the states fight the feds on enforcement. I think most citizens are actually pretty placid. Most people just have too much to lose. I think you’d have a lot more of a hiding them scenario. I’m gonna put it at maybe 1 percent of lawful owners fighting violently. Many probably forming groups that turn it into a years long standoff that is effectively just quarantine ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2019, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-taking-your-guns-really-worth-it-for-gun-owners-to-die-over/829788/30 "2019-02-19T00:22:25Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > … What % of gun owners are indeed diehard enough that they would open fire on government agents trying to take their guns away? 30%? … Probably depends significantly on the specifics of the scenario. Is this Kamala declaring a national emergency and asking French peacekeepers to come in and confiscate everyone’s guns via door-to-door searches? That probably gets a lot of people literally up-in-arms. OTOH, if the country decides to repeal the 2nd Amendment some years in the future, and above-board votes in 38+ states ratify the repeal-the-2nd-Amendment, well, that’s a country that’s a LOT different from the one we live in today, and its populace would apparently be much more supportive of gun control, so relatively few, if any, people are going to violently resist. Right now, today, in the real USA, something like the first scenario I offered, I put the # at a single-digit or low-double-digit % of gun owners actually willing to discharge a firearm with deadly intent at the gun grabbers. It’s probably worth mentioning that that’s still a shitload of people shooting at the gun grabbers. Taking the oft-cited (but probably not entirely accurate) figure of 80 million gun owners, 1% would still be 800,000 trigger-pullers. ---
**Author:** ![Littleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ccd318/32.png) [@Littleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Littleman)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2019, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-taking-your-guns-really-worth-it-for-gun-owners-to-die-over/829788/31 "2019-02-19T23:15:57Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > 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? Well, It’s not just what some people believe. Ohio’s general assembly codified this into law; The individual right to keep and bear arms, being a fundamental individual right that predates the United States Constitution and Ohio Constitution, and being a constitutionally protected right in every part of Ohio… It might be worth researching on what basis they called it a fundamental individual right that predates the US Constitution… ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2019, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-taking-your-guns-really-worth-it-for-gun-owners-to-die-over/829788/32 "2019-02-20T00:38:59Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > **Government taking your guns - really worth it for gun owners to die over?** > > It was worth it for [David Koresh](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/waco/topten.html). And that made it worth it for Timothy McVeigh. David Koresh wasn’t really a gun nut, so much as a religious nut. But Ruby Ridge is a better example. The deaths of two innocents and one US Marshal. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2019, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-taking-your-guns-really-worth-it-for-gun-owners-to-die-over/829788/33 "2019-02-20T01:02:31Z")
> [@Crotalus](#): > > 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. Then there are those of us with known weapons and weapons that had previously fallen through the cracks [I know someone who has a couple Ruger service 6s and a 1911 that somehow found its way out of military possession into private ownership that are not registered in any way] where they would happily turn over the registered weapons and be happy they have a few that they still have that nobody knew about. \ As I have pointed out previously, I can go downstairs in my barn right now and fabricate a pretty reliable [‘zip gun’](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_firearm) as I spent a number of years as a machinist and am pretty good at metal fabrication. Would I die if they came to confiscate my weapons? Probably not, depending on how they went about it. Broad daylight, knock on the door, peaceful turn over. Dead of night, SWAT raid/home invasion - bodies on the floor, blood on the walls. Self defense - how do I know they are here ‘legally’? Could be a home invasion. Proper governmental action to legally confiscate something is to show up with a warrant in hand. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2019, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-taking-your-guns-really-worth-it-for-gun-owners-to-die-over/829788/34 "2019-02-20T01:17:35Z")
> [@Littleman](#): > > It might be worth researching on what basis they called it a fundamental individual right that predates the US Constitution… It wouldn’t take long to get to the bottom of that one. ---
**Author:** ![Littleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ccd318/32.png) [@Littleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Littleman)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2019, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-taking-your-guns-really-worth-it-for-gun-owners-to-die-over/829788/35 "2019-02-20T01:24:58Z")
Has the government actually ever gone door to door confiscating anything that’s been banned? Seems the MO is to just let them go away by obsolescence, how many pre 1986 machine guns are around? Apparently few enough as to not even be on the gun control radar or rarely be mentioned. ---
**Author:** ![Littleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ccd318/32.png) [@Littleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Littleman)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2019, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-taking-your-guns-really-worth-it-for-gun-owners-to-die-over/829788/36 "2019-02-20T01:28:04Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > It wouldn’t take long to get to the bottom of that one. ? I honestly don’t know, unless it’s just the simple fact that everyone had them even before the constitutions authorship and you know, used them to enforce the DOI. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2019, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-taking-your-guns-really-worth-it-for-gun-owners-to-die-over/829788/37 "2019-02-20T03:56:14Z")
> [@Littleman](#): > > Has the government actually ever gone door to door confiscating anything that’s been banned? > > . They raided quite a few places during Prohibition and smashed a lot of barrels and bottles. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2019, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-taking-your-guns-really-worth-it-for-gun-owners-to-die-over/829788/38 "2019-02-20T04:45:23Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > 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? There are no fundamental universal human rights. That’s a very useful fiction we in the west agree to propagate. ---
**Author:** ![Littleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ccd318/32.png) [@Littleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Littleman)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2019, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-taking-your-guns-really-worth-it-for-gun-owners-to-die-over/829788/39 "2019-02-20T06:00:56Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > They raided quite a few places during Prohibition and smashed a lot of barrels and bottles. So, drugs basically. Even then, only sales points not just anybody who had a little. Raiding places selling or manufacturing illegal guns or drugs/alcohol is one thing, going around looking for them Is quite another. Long guns aren’t even registered. Nm the difficulties tracking down even registered guns, people move, die, lose them in one way or another…it’s an impossible task. I’d expect a passive approach, at most a stiff sentence for possession and just let them roll in through the course of normal police work. Of course, that would again require changing state Constitutions because if federal law overrides a state Constitution then state agencies are forbidden by their Constitution to participate in enforcing it …only feds could do it ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2019, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-taking-your-guns-really-worth-it-for-gun-owners-to-die-over/829788/40 "2019-02-20T06:08:00Z")
> [@Littleman](#): > > … > > Long guns aren’t even registered. Nm the difficulties tracking down even registered guns, people move, die, lose them in one way or another…it’s an impossible task. > … All gun sales fill out a federal form. But you are right, difficulties. They are perfectly capable of getting “no knock” warrants for everyone the govt _thinks_ owns a gun, however. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-taking-your-guns-really-worth-it-for-gun-owners-to-die-over/829788.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-taking-your-guns-really-worth-it-for-gun-owners-to-die-over/829788.md?page=3)