Please note that I do not like this idea, or that if it came to pass it wouldn’t be wrong or harmful. And yes I’m aware that the Second Amendment would have to either be overturned or effectively made a dead letter by an abiding supermajority for this to happen. What I’m asking is, in the long run will the tide of history be against private gun ownership?
It seems to me that historically the trend is that the more settled a nation is, the more stable and peaceful, the more it’s administered by a central government, the more responsibilities that are turned over to the state, the more that the struggles of the past become ancient history, the more likely it is for private possession of weapons to be seen as unnecessary or even harmful. A citizen Militia and universal access to weapons seems to be something that typically only occurs for a few brief centuries in the cultural development cycle between feudalism and the rise of enduring centralized states. The evolution of Republican Rome to Imperial Rome is the classic example. In the very long run, you get the sort of super-stabilization that (barring dynastic collapse) categorized imperial Chinese civilization.
It’s arguable that however much we might like to think that the United States was uniquely founded on a theory of personal and political freedom, there are plenty of perfectly nice, modern, prosperous nations with representative democracy which accept as a matter of course that firearms should rarely if ever be available to the general public. Britain, the very “tyranny” the American colonials rebelled against, is hardly a totalitarian dictatorship, despite effectively banning private gun ownership. Britain itself once upon a time championed private gun ownership- a tradition that the colonies inherited- only to slowly restrict it over centuries.
In other words, did the American tradition of valuing gun ownership come about not because it’s an indispensable ingredient of the theory that allows us to be a free people, but simply because the United States used to be a poorly centralized frontier nation, and now that that’s no longer the case the culture that gave rise to gun ownership will inevitably fade?
Not a chance. There are more guns than people in the U.S. They are not going any where. Then the gun fraternity has a lot of political clout with very big powerful organizations. Gun maufacturers also have big power. Like it or not, guns are here to stay.
I think it’s so far out of the realm of possibility as to be . . . impossible.
I think America is much more likely to get rid of all nuclear weapons before private gun ownership is banned.
Even if some crazy was able to pass legislation to ban guns, the citizens of America would certainly refuse to comply. Then what, you’re going to use military force to confiscate all the guns out there? How could that possibly be worth it?
And all of those hands will be cold and dead within a century, anyway. In the current political environment, a gun ban would be completely impossible, but political environments change with generations. Will it happen in my lifetime, or yours? Probably not. Will it happen eventually? There’s no way to know.
No and for a multitude of reasons. I’ll give two. There are too many hunters for one. For two, the ramifications of overturning the second amendment may lead to precedents that even those who disapprove of gun ownership don’t want.
Which is why I included the part about the Second Amendment becoming a “dead letter”. Apparently, gun control advocates don’t want to overturn the Second (or perhaps more precisely, they see no need to do so)- they simply want to restrict firearms to the point of abolition, and have the Second Amendment somehow be irrelevent to this.
Huntings been declining at a pretty good clip for the last decade. And the numbers weren’t that huge to begin with. According to this, its down to like 12 million. That’s like a couple percentage of the US population, if it keeps declining I could see hunters becoming a pretty impotent political force in the next decade or so
I think it is, in fact, inevitable. As more and more people grow up without any connection to nature, hunting will become a tiny subculture. As farmers and rural people move to the suburbs and cities, and “green space” becomes transformed into cement and urban sprawl, fewer and fewer and fewer people every year will grow up shooting .22s at cans or hunting squirrels. This means that people will become less and less familiar with guns, and hardly anyone will know how they work. What information they do receive about guns, they’ll get from films and television. When the population of hunters and sport shooters is small enough, then guns can be banned because there’ll be “no need” to keep them around for the sake of a tiny subculture of people.
Also, fewer and fewer people will serve in the military, since we don’t draft people anymore. The military is becoming a professional class, and this means that the number of Americans who have any military training with firearms will continue to get smaller and smaller.
The end result will be that the average American knows ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about guns, has no experience with them, and is afraid of them. Criminals, as always, will still use guns and still be able to get them easily. What will happen? Guns will be banned completely, since “only” criminals will have them.
It will be similar to the UK, eventually. MAYBE a few people will be able to get a single-shot rifle or a double-barreled shotgun for hunting, the 200 people that still have farms or rural property in America (they’ll have to register it with the government, pay a 2,000 dollar licensing fee, only be allowed to purchase one box of ammunition a year which will cost 200 dollars, etc) but for all intents and purposes, semi-automatic rifles and handguns of any kind will almost certainly be completely banned among the general public within 200 years.
The idea of being able to go to a gun store and buy a gun will seem absolutely absurd.
The OP’s post is making some awfully sweeping claims like “progress and centralization = disarming”, you’re going from a sample size of “1.” Most of continental Europe never practiced widespread gun ownership, England is the only real country with a history of widespread gun ownership that has undertaken extensive prohibition of gun ownership. However keep in mind that in England it’s still perfectly legal to buy a shot gun–and also keep in mind that even at its peak England never had a gun ownership rate anywhere in the same range as the United States.
Yes, I think it’s probably going to happen someday.
50 years ago, people were far more casual and rational about guns. You could take your gun to school if you had an after school target shooting event. You could mail order them from the sears catalog. Gun ownership and usage was socially acceptable and looked upon as natural. Many of the people who grew up in that environment and see guns as they are - tools or weapons that aren’t inherently evil - form a large portion of the gun rights movement.
Over time, through demonization in the media, social ostricism of gun ownership, and other factors will make gun ownership and usage seem strange or evil. In my life I’ve had some people react to my gun ownership with shock, like how could I be one of those people.
There’s a biased presentation of guns through all media by focusing endlessly on violence porn and never on positive uses of guns, by giving air time to gun control advocates with no rebuttal, by lying about the nature of guns (for example by implying or flat out stating that “assault weapons bans” affect military weapons or “machine guns”), etc.
There’s also a trend in our society to discourage people from looking at the sort of rugged individualism that our heros of a half century ago in a positive light. Back then male heros were manly men who didn’t rely on anyone, especially for protecting themselves or their families. Now we’re encouraged to be compliant sheep that relies on the government to help us.
As far as legislation goes, if you “compromise” with someone who wants the complete abolishion of your rights, every time you’re conceding something and not getting anything in return. After enough cycles, you end up with nothing. Gun control legislation will eventually peck gun ownership to death through one sided “compromise”.
There will always be a vocal pro-gun movement, but their numbers will die out as more generations pass from the time that guns were viewed realistically in society to more to a time when guns are viewed as inherently evil and gun ownership is ostracized, from generations that viewed independence as a noble virtue to generations who think it totally natural to be subservient to the government.
People’s only exposure to guns will be heroes and villains blasting each other to pieces on the big screen. (Or someone you know who was shot, raped or robbed by a criminal who somehow managed to get his hands on a gun.) The idea of “normal people” owning them will be as ridiculous as “normal people” owning aircraft carriers or F-16s.
Guns will be gaveled into extinction, little by little, step by step, by leftist courts. (This is why gun advocates oppose ALL efforts to restrict gun rights further than they already are - because the tactic of the anti-gun movement is to slowly chip away at the 2nd Amendment until it’s gone. You give them an inch, you’ve lost already.) NO compromise, fuck that, I say.
I doubt it. It’s a whole lot easier to take drugs, pornography, books, music, subversive literature, or just about anything else away from someone than a weapon.
And if they do ban guns, there may be a drop in *legal *gun ownership, but there would be a corresponding rise in *illegal *gun ownership. Maybe more than corresponding, as a backlash.
They have enough trouble banning pot, fer Chrissakes. And you can’t fight back with a spliff!!..TRM
It would be much more effective. A hidden gun is a gun that’s not being used to kill people. People are also less likely over time to defy such a gun ban simply because a gun you have to keep hidden away isn’t much use or much fun. Especially when over time it becomes obvious that getting rid of guns WASN’T part of the black helicopter conspiracy to install a dictatorship. And, a hidden gun is harder for a criminal to find and steal, which will help dry up the supply for criminals.
A law that got people to hide away their guns and make them harder to access would be almost as good as just getting rid of them. I expect the first generation would have a lot of people hiding guns buried in their basement; the next generation would be full of people talking about their crazy old Uncle or Grandpa who thought there was some sort of need for hiding guns in the basement.
In which case the criminals would just find an easier way of getting guns. It might be hard for criminals in the UK, which is an island, to get guns (though they still manage to do it) but the United States happens to share a southern border with a gigantic, third-world, corruption-ridden country called Mexico, which already manages to smuggle thousands of human beings into America. MS-13 and other Mexican gangs are working on both sides of the border - you don’t think, if the supply of guns dried up in the US, these criminals would pay off a few corrupt police or military men in Mexico who would give them the key to an armory in exchange for some drugs or cash? Boom, now you’ve got an influx of weapons on the black market in America (including, probably, a lot of old G3s and AK-47s, which are genuine assault rifles, not to mention grenades.)
And who complain because of all the guns smuggled into their country from us. Reducing available guns here in America would likely help Mexico, and much of the Western Hemisphere.
In comparison, a tiny problem compared to the ocean of guns we have now.
You really BELIEVE the Mexican government’s claims that their poor country would be all peaches and cream if it weren’t for the evil American guns coming in? It’s bullshit. I’ve SEEN photographs of arsenals confiscated from Mexican drug cartels - they’re full of actual automatic rifles, including real G3s and real AK-47s, and shitloads of grenades. The claim that Mexico’s criminals are getting their arms from America is bullshit through and through!