I tried looking it up online but all the hits you get when you enter “gun confiscation” and “firearms confiscation” are discussing theoretical future threats rather than historical acts.
So can somebody tell me what laws have been enacted that confiscated firearms? For the record, I’m not looking for the following:
*Voluntary programs like gun buybacks. I’m only looking for mandatory programs.
*Laws that confiscated weapons in general from specific individuals - like a law that said any convicted felon couldn’t own a firearm.
*Laws that established procedures for owning a firearm unless those procedures were impossible to comply with. So nothing about taxes or licenses unless these laws couldn’t be complied with.
*Laws that banned the future sale of weapons. I’m only looking for laws that confiscated weapons that were already owned.
*Laws outside of the United States.
*Laws that were proposed but never enacted.
So what I am looking for are laws - federal, state, or local - that basically said something like: “The following type of firearm is no longer legal to own. If you own one, you must turn it in within thirty days.”
My questions on these laws are:
What laws are there that did this?
How many firearms were confiscated?
How many people had firearms confiscated?
How was the confiscation put into effect?
How many people were convicted for non-compliance?
I’m not looking for a debate on the morality or wisdom of such laws. I’m just looking for facts about their extent.
I thought I heard of the same thing happening in Boston after the bombing, but googling for a link I find only links to gunconfiscation.com and Alex Jones and suchlike. Possibly I’m googling wrong, so maybe.
SKS rifles were deemed assault weapons in California with the passage of the Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Control Act in 1989. There were two types of SKS rifles. Those that had fixed magazines and those that had detachable mags. Folks that owned the rifles with the detachable mags could keep them, BUT they had to be registered.
In "This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible," Brown University visiting professor Charles E. Cobb, Jr., a former Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee activist, lays out the history behind armed self-defense during the liberation of black communities during the Southern Freedom Movement of the 1960s, and how laws passed during that time were blatantly aimed at criminalizing the black community’s ability to effectively protect itself against Klan terrorism.
Gun control in CA was rooted in anti-Mexican and anti-Chinese sentiment. A lot of gun control was historically enacted to suppress minorities. And while this bit of history is interesting, it’s not persuasive on what laws should be today.
To the point of this thread - the city of Sunnyvaleand San Francisco have banned the possession of magazines with a capacity greater than 10. Prior state law prohibited the manufacture, import, buying, selling, trading of these magazines - but these two city laws went further and banned possession, even if legally acquired prior to the current restriction.
Formerly legal rifles in Connecticut became illegal to own unless registered fairly recently. Owners were forced to either register, dispose, or become felons.
For some reason, I forgot about the NY SAFE act - restrictions passed where registered owners of now prohibited weapons were sent letters to surrender or remove them.
Not sure if this is what you are looking for, but with the passage of the 1994 several firearms were changed to NFA items meaning they needed to be registered with the feds, tax stamps paid etc. For those of us in states where commoners are not allowed to own NFA firearms, we were told to deactivate, destroy, or sell anything that had been relabeled. This was a state ruling based upon Federal law.
Why is this not persuasive? You think we now live in a land of equality where the establishment no longer takes action to suppress minorities or other disenfranchised classes?
The motivation for laws 100 years ago is not really relevant to what the laws should be today. The merits or demerits of today’s current or future laws should stand on their own - independent of the motivations of those long dead.
If there was a really good law pushed through the legislature by an otherwise evil person who mistakenly thought the law would serve evil purposes, it would still be a really good law. The converse holds as well.
Past motivations can be important to inform how current individuals are motivated if the same rationale exists or parallels can be drawn. Other than that, today’s current or future laws should be based on the needs we face today.
I feel like you sidestepped the question; let’s backtrack a bit, though it may be a little bit of a hijack.
Bricker posted a link to an article that purported to show that the civil rights movement, where millions of African Americans finally won the right to stop being treated as slaves at worst and second class citizens at best, was achieved because of the freedom to carry guns. I, a non-gun owning suburban liberal, said this is why I support gun rights. To be more explicit: while I don’t buy all this black helicopter shit and know that a gun owning public does not have a chance if their government turns on them, I do believe the the presence of guns in a populace can inhibit the petty abuse that occurs at the hands of some county sheriffs and even with major metropolitan area police forces. With our completely broken and very profitable prison system, with the racial and class disparities in our justice system, with the mess that is our civil forfeiture laws, and with the militarization of police and their increasingly common tactic of no-knock paramilitary like raids, I almost think we need more guns in the hands of the populace rather than fewer.
How is this not persuasive? How is what is happening today so different than what happened 50 years ago with the civil rights movement? Why do the laws of 50 or 100 years ago, that is freedom to own and carry a gun shall not be abridged by the state, no longer relevant in this day of a corporate influenced justice system and groups like ALEC?
Apologies - I think I misinterpreted your question. I was referring specifically to the anti-Mexican and anti-Chinese origins of CA gun control. Though generally I think the statement holds. In particular - the sentiment behind the genesis of a particular law is not persuasive on whether that law should continue or cease to exist. The only factors that should be persuasive on that question is whether the laws are effective in achieving their goal, and if their goals are worthwhile. As long as those things continue to be true, then the laws should continue.
I think this is a valuable reason to support gun rights, though not my own primary motivation. I don’t think gun possession is the most effective solution against institutionalized oppression. It is a potential solution, but in our current environment there are more effective means.
I believe a well armed populace serves as both a passive deterrent and active defense against isolated acts of aggression. That self defense is an inherent right and access to an effective means of self defense flows from that. That’s why I said the historical elements are not persuasive. In my view - it doesn’t matter what happened before or what happens after with respect to this belief - it will remain true regardless.
Since there’s an extended discussion on the purported connection between firearms ownership and civil rights, has anyone published an article that alleges a connection between the growing support for marriage equality and gun ownership among gay Americans?
I think this becomes something of a chicken-and-egg question. People arm themselves over fear of over-aggressive police forces. Police forces buy flack jackets, machine guns and armored vehicles because they fear being outgunned, and then they use them to bust pot sellers.
Guns certainly seemed to have helped here but then we can cite Mahatma Gandhi and his fellow Indians obtaining freedom from British oppression with no guns.
The Troubles in Ireland, while certainly violent for a long time, were solved not with guns but via a political process.
Point being guns are not necessarily the only solution to a problem.
I don’t buy it. The reason that the police get flack jackets, machine guns, armored vehicles and more is because of the DoD Excess Property Program (Program 1033) and the wind down of the Iraq war. Because of this program, police departments get this stuff for free.