# Is it inevitable that someday guns will be banned in the US? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 3, 2009, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-inevitable-that-someday-guns-will-be-banned-in-the-us/495197 "2009-05-03T18:55:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-inevitable-that-someday-guns-will-be-banned-in-the-us/495197/81 "2009-05-05T15:53:01Z")
There is no chance Obama will ban guns (and gun control was _not_ part of his campaign). The current run on guns and ammo (and the concurrent price gouging by merchants doubling and tripling prices on ammo) is a purely a result of fear mongering by the gun industry. I actually find it gratifying that so many idots are being separated from their wallets stockpiling ammunition that’s never going to do anything but rust in a garage. I wonder if they believe evrything they hear from Nigerian barristers as well. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-inevitable-that-someday-guns-will-be-banned-in-the-us/495197/82 "2009-05-05T16:00:35Z")
I think people are missing the point. Gun rights won’t be taken away while people want guns. This is the case now and in the foreseeable future. Gun rights would be taken away because at some point in the (possible) future, people won’t want guns. Gun manufacturers will stop making them because no one is buying them. If precisely no one but a few historical collectors has guns, why wouldn’t we prohibit them? For the record: I’m opposed to gun control, but I will never own a gun. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-inevitable-that-someday-guns-will-be-banned-in-the-us/495197/83 "2009-05-05T16:09:32Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > There is no chance Obama will ban guns (and gun control was _not_ part of his campaign). His website said otherwise. Based on your previous performances as a prophet, I also will not decide what there is “no chance” he will do based on your say-so. > [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > The current run on guns and ammo (and the concurrent price gouging by merchants doubling and tripling prices on ammo) is a purely a result of fear mongering by the gun industry. I breathlessly await your proof of this assertion. > [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > I actually find it gratifying that so many idots are being separated from their wallets stockpiling ammunition that’s never going to do anything but rust in a garage. I wonder if they believe evrything they hear from Nigerian barristers as well. Well, not everybody is a tough guy like you, **Dio** , nor does everybody have your prescience. We have to get by as best we can. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-inevitable-that-someday-guns-will-be-banned-in-the-us/495197/84 "2009-05-05T16:17:02Z")
Here’s Obama’s [own website](http://origin.barackobama.com/issues/urban_policy/#crime-and-law-enforcement) calling for the permanent reinstatement of the AWB. ---
**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:** [May 5, 2009, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-inevitable-that-someday-guns-will-be-banned-in-the-us/495197/85 "2009-05-05T16:22:47Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > There is no chance Obama will ban guns (and gun control was _not_ part of his campaign). The current run on guns and ammo (and the concurrent price gouging by merchants doubling and tripling prices on ammo) is a purely a result of fear mongering by the gun industry. I actually find it gratifying that so many idots are being separated from their wallets stockpiling ammunition that’s never going to do anything but rust in a garage. I wonder if they believe evrything they hear from Nigerian barristers as well. You apparently didn’t read **Scumpup** ’s post just before yours. The gun industry doesn’t **need** to “fear monger”- gun owners are increasing their demand for ammunition on their own, with no help needed (other than a Democratic supermajority lead by a President from one of the most anti-gun states in the Union). I’ll bet if you’d lived in the early twentieth century, you’d have said that World War One was all a big plot by the evil munitions companies. ---
**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:** [May 5, 2009, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-inevitable-that-someday-guns-will-be-banned-in-the-us/495197/86 "2009-05-05T16:37:31Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Well, of course. They can’t possibly keep guns from coming in, not when they are surrounded by gun worshippers. I’m reminded of the progression of alcohol prohibition in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries: Temperence Crusader:“Ban demon rum from our town!” Town dry law is passed. Onlooker: “Everyone’s going outside the town limits to get booze”. Temperence Crusader: “Ban demon rum from our county!”. County dry law is passed. Onlooker: “Everyone’s going over the county line to get booze”. Temperence Crusader: “Ban demon rum from our state!” State dry law is passed. Onlooker: “Everyone’s drinking booze bootlegged from the next state over”. Temperence Crusader: “Ban demon rum from our country!” National Prohibition is enacted. Onlooker: “Everyone’s drinking booze smuggled over the border from Canada and Mexico”. Temperence Crusader: “Let’ invade Canada and Mexico!” Or it’s sort of like the old-style Communists who blamed every failure of Communism on the fact that the _whole world_ needed to be Communist before it could work properly. ---
**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:** [May 5, 2009, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-inevitable-that-someday-guns-will-be-banned-in-the-us/495197/87 "2009-05-05T17:06:03Z")
> [@Alastair\_Moonsong](#): > > **Argent Towers** , throughout this thread you’ve been mentioning the “unfortunate trend” of declining gun exposure to men, women, and children in America as firearms become “villified” and as they (meaning the population as a whole) pass their lives without knowing many people who shoot. > > I don’t understand this. Can you explain why, exactly, it is bad for people not to have these experiences? I don’t understand how a nation that is familiar and comfortable with guns is any better off than a nation which shuns them. > > And please, don’t explain the problem as “people who aren’t exposed to guns are more likely to view them in the wrong light” or somesuch - I’m interested in the specific benefits to America (or other applicable nations) of a populace that is at home with firearms. As others have pointed out, gun ownership would organically wither away if we really did someday arrive at the “peaceable kingdom” envisioned by some. A sort a worldwide equivalent of the European Union, where every nation in the world was democratic, stable, reasonably prosperous, not suffering from intractable social problems, and existing safely in a world where everyone else is too. The problem is that lots of people who would like to create such a world reverse cause and effect: they think that you can _make_ the world peaceful and safe by banning the tools of violence. Or they insist that retaining such tools is part of a self-perpetuating mindset that must be broken in order to create such a world. Unfortunately, the correlation between the sheer unavailability of (legal) weapons and the peacefulness and lawfulness of a country is poor bordering on nonexistent. There’s also a ‘worst of both worlds’ dilemma, in which a compromise between two incompatable ways of doing something is worse than either alternative. I believe that currently we’re in such a position: we do not have the gun-familiar culture we had before the '60s, nor do we have a virtually gun-free society like Britain or Japan. Instead, we have the equivalent of society where half the population are teetotalers and the other half are hardened alcoholics. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-inevitable-that-someday-guns-will-be-banned-in-the-us/495197/88 "2009-05-05T18:09:19Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > 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. Are you claiming that, eventually, the US will have hardly any farmers or rural people? ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-inevitable-that-someday-guns-will-be-banned-in-the-us/495197/89 "2009-05-05T18:15:57Z")
Absolutely. It’s only a matter of time. Urban sprawl is a gigantic monster that is slowly spreading its tentacles all over the entire country. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-inevitable-that-someday-guns-will-be-banned-in-the-us/495197/90 "2009-05-05T18:46:54Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > Absolutely. It’s only a matter of time. Urban sprawl is a gigantic monster that is slowly spreading its tentacles all over the entire country. Are you insane? Countrywide urban sprawl is a spook story circulated among yuppies when one of them is trying to “raise awareness” about the fragility of our nation’s open space. Or some such nonsense. “Rat on your pop and urban sprawl will come get you!” It’s a tale told by idiots who’ve never stepped foot outside a major city. Look at any map and connect two minor neighboring cities. The 30-75 miles that separate them are better known as “the boonies” because it’s nothing but farmland as far as the eye can see. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-inevitable-that-someday-guns-will-be-banned-in-the-us/495197/91 "2009-05-05T19:55:40Z")
Rural areas are not necessarily disappearing but [rural people are](http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/01/emptied-north-dakota/bowden-text), at least in some parts of the country. ---
**Author:** ![Lightnin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightnin/32/180_2.png) [@Lightnin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightnin)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-inevitable-that-someday-guns-will-be-banned-in-the-us/495197/92 "2009-05-05T20:09:04Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > On the other hand, propagating the threat of a ban on guns has been very good for the gun business, and [ammunition sales in particular](http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/05/04/ammo.shortage/index.html?section=cnn_latest):Never let it be said that the gun industry missed an opportunity to exploit paranoia. See? Democrats really DO create jobs! ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-inevitable-that-someday-guns-will-be-banned-in-the-us/495197/93 "2009-05-05T23:26:20Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > What you’re failing to take into account, is all the criminal use of guns. Criminals will ALWAYS have guns in America; this is a given. When the law-abiding, gun-owning portion of society dwindles down to nothing, BUT the criminal element of society is still as well-armed as it’s always been, it will be very, very easy to ban guns completely. Because only criminals “need” guns, right? I know it’s ridiculous but that’s the logic they’ll use. I don’t really consider a given that society will always consider criminals with guns a big problem. One hundred years from now gun crime could be so rare in America that no one really considers them a menace. We’re making an awful lot of supposition based on unknowable variables. Plus, things that were patently illegal in the past are to some degree gaining wider acceptance these days. For example home distilling is still illegal in the United States but I would not be surprised at all if it is made legal at some point in the next 100 years, it already is legal in some first world countries where it is not seen to be associated with criminal enterprise but more with a desire to craft one’s own unique liquors. If we woke up tomorrow and no “regular” Americans owned guns I do think they’d be banned, but the process through which gun use will become so rare as to no longer be a contentious political issue is going to take such a great number of years, that when you factor in the legal hurdles involved in an outright ban I think we all agree a ban will not even be technically feasible for at least 100 years. Keep in mind that even a very small number of people, under our system and through use of the courts, can have a disproportionate impact on our society’s laws. When we start talking about a time span of centuries I think, given the rapid societal and technological changes the last 100 years brought, we can’t sit here in 2009 an make meaningful predictions about the society of this country in 2109. ---
**Author:** ![BrandonR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/779978/32.png) [@BrandonR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrandonR)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-inevitable-that-someday-guns-will-be-banned-in-the-us/495197/94 "2009-05-06T00:54:17Z")
> [@telebox](#): > > Speaking as a UK resident with no vested interest either way, what effect would a sustained program of ‘education’ have if kids were subject to a ‘guns are evil’ message from kindergarten onwards ? I doubt it would have any effect. [DARE](http://www.dare.com/home/default.asp) has been trying to do that with drugs for years and plenty of teens still end up doing drugs. Of course, they end up doing them because they realize they were fed a lot of biased propaganda and I imagine they’d realize the same about anti-gun ownership education. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-inevitable-that-someday-guns-will-be-banned-in-the-us/495197/95 "2009-05-06T01:02:59Z")
> [@BrandonR](#): > > I doubt it would have any effect. [DARE](http://www.dare.com/home/default.asp) has been trying to do that with drugs for years and plenty of teens still end up doing drugs. Of course, they end up doing them because they realize they were fed a lot of biased propaganda and I imagine they’d realize the same about anti-gun ownership education. It’s a little hard to have a “guns are evil” message and then have police be armed - police who are supposed to represent the force of law and order and justice and civil society. Sooner or later some kid is bound to ask, “if guns are evil, why do the police have them?” The only good answer to that would be, “because police might be in dangerous situations where they might need them,” but even a kid would know to respond, “well, what if I’m in a dangerous situation and I might need them?” Nobody likes to feel like they are restricted in capacity like that, especially not kids. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-inevitable-that-someday-guns-will-be-banned-in-the-us/495197/96 "2009-05-06T02:56:56Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > Guns didn’t always have such an “evil” connotation back when more people understood them and had experience with them. It used to be they were just basically another tool, and were treated as such. I mean, even as late as 1970, David Crosby is nonchalantly holding a small-bore shotgun across his lap in the band photo on the cover of [Deja Vu.](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/b3/c2/1a54024128a06429605fd010.L.jpg) They’re sitting in the woods - there’s a dog there with them - presumably the gun is for shooting small game, or just plinking. (Obviously it’s a staged photo and they weren’t really out camping in the woods, but it’s plausible that they _could_ be.) Nowadays would any band have a firearm being held by one of the members, right on the cover? And CSNY is a total peacenick band, as left-wing as you can get - but I’ll bet David Crosby still knows how to use a gun. Men of his generation just did, and there wasn’t anything horrific about holding one. FWIW in David Crosby’s biography he explains that while he is a total “peacenick” when war is concerned, he is also a huge supporter of individuals having weapons to defend themselves. IIRC he relates in the book a case where he shot at a burglar who attempted to enter his bedroom. Further to his biography, I’ve heard him state in an interview that he “hates” anti-gun people, and stated (in effect - not an actual quote) that he was really disappointed in Democrats for not realizing that the right to defend your own life is a civil right. IIRC Neil Young is very anti-gun. I have no idea about Stills and Nash, and really who cares about them anyhow? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-inevitable-that-someday-guns-will-be-banned-in-the-us/495197/97 "2009-05-06T02:59:16Z")
Wow. I already liked David Crosby but now I like him even more. Thanks for that info. I love the cover of _Deja Vu._ It’s so quaint and yet also elegant - a remnant of a bygone time. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-inevitable-that-someday-guns-will-be-banned-in-the-us/495197/98 "2009-05-06T03:01:37Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > I mean, even as late as 1970, David Crosby is nonchalantly holding a small-bore shotgun across his lap in the band photo on the cover of [Deja Vu.](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/b3/c2/1a54024128a06429605fd010.L.jpg) They’re sitting in the woods - there’s a dog there with them - presumably the gun is for shooting small game, or just plinking. (Obviously it’s a staged photo and they weren’t really out camping in the woods, but it’s plausible that they _could_ be.) Total hijack, but I had that album on vinyl. If you could see it fullsize you’d see they’re _all_ armed - it was an Old West pastiche, done like an old b&w photo of an OW gang. Neil Young is dressed as riverboat gambler, Stephen Stills as a Confederate officer, Crosby as a mountain man-type ( well, he seemed to dress like that anyway in those days ), a couple as cowboys. They all have pistol belts ( Young has a dual rig ) and the drummer is leaning on a rifle with a bandolier over one shoulder. It’s a prettier, more arty version of the type of cover the Eagles used on [Desperado](http://www.morrisonhotelgallery.com/images/medium/Eagles%20Desperado.jpg). Not to invalidate your general argument which is reasonable on that point, but that particular photo is even more deliberately staged than you assumed and would have been obvious to even the most pacifistic hippy fan as them just playing around :). ---
**Author:** ![sqweels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-inevitable-that-someday-guns-will-be-banned-in-the-us/495197/99 "2009-05-06T21:35:42Z")
> [@Diogenes the Cynic](#): > > There is no chance Obama will ban guns (and gun control was not part of his campaign). > [@Scumpup](#): > > His website said otherwise > > Here’s Obama’s [own website](http://origin.barackobama.com/issues/urban_policy/#crime-and-law-enforcement) calling for the permanent reinstatement of the AWB. OK, now where the link to his site calling for a _ban on guns_? There’s a huge difference between the AWB and a law making it impossible to legally own or shoot a .30 cal hunting rifle or a pistol. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-inevitable-that-someday-guns-will-be-banned-in-the-us/495197/100 "2009-05-06T21:56:00Z")
He’s not going to waste political capital signing an AWB either. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-inevitable-that-someday-guns-will-be-banned-in-the-us/495197.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-inevitable-that-someday-guns-will-be-banned-in-the-us/495197.md?page=6)