Today all firearms in the world smaller than 20mm in caliber magically vanish (pistols, shotguns, rifles etc.). It only happens once so firearms are able to be built and used afterwards as normal.
What happens next and how does this change the world?
How would militaries and law enforcement react to their primary weapons vanishing?
Would crime increase or decrease as a result?
“That board with a nail in it may have defeated us, but the humans won’t stop there. They’ll make bigger boards and bigger nails, and soon, they will make a board with a nail so big, it will destroy them all!”
But seriously, basically nothing. Gun factories would immediately be rebuilt. People couldn’t shoot each other for a month, maybe two. Stabbings would go way up in that time. The net effect would simply be a lot of old guns of questionable provenance would be replaced with all modern weapons, and people would hoard them 10x as much. Record profits ensue! This would be the greatest thing that ever happened to the gun industry.
They would build a shit ton of them. The economic impact would be beyond huge.
well, militaries would still have cannons and howitzers and planes with bombs and helis with rockets and missiles and torpedoes and nuclear devices and…
Law enforcements will have to do withs tazers, batons and handcuffs.
Without the excuse of “there are so many guns out there we can’t do anything about them” we might be able to control the factories and limit sales to non-criminals and sane people. And limit the amount anyone can hold - no more antique collectors because no more antique guns. In any case, the military would get first dibs on new production, so not getting guns would be patriotic.
Yes, there will be pushback, but since this would be a miracle, maybe we can get the preachers to preach that God clearly does not like guns, so believers should reconsider any possible love for them also.
Tasers will become deadlier, and the Anzio will be your home protection system. The Anzio will be extremely protected to the point of almost being holy.
I think it’s a fine sentiment, but unlikely to be successful, as the OP disappeared all the guns but left the manufacturing AND ammunition behind.
What I’d expect is that the military would very quickly pass legislation directing all future production toward military use, which would sound hopeful…
And all the civilians would turn towards ghost guns - since it’s sadly easy for anyone with good machining equipment and CADCAM to make their own (illegally) or even 3D printing guns.
So if anything, I’d expect things to get worse on the civilian side. While I’d love the government to pass a lot more common sense gun laws, I see zero ways that our current highly polarized Federal government and reactionary SCOTUS would support such.
As for the REST of the world, then yeah, I think the first point would still apply, and by the time much production turned to civilian use, that private gun ownership of any sort would be too much of an expense/bother, especially if private ownership laws were further restricted in the meantime.
So TL;DR, America’s gun problem would be better short term, but probably worse long term, and the rest of the world’s situation would improve.
3D printed guns are a good way to decrease the gun-nut population. It’s a technology that’s horribly suited for guns: You can get maybe two or three shots out of a printed gun before it explodes in your hand.
Machining is much more realistic: That is, after all, the way that gun factories make them. But home metal milling machines are quite rare. Guns probably would become the primary output of everyone who does have machining equipment, but it’d still take a while to get back up to current levels of availability (especially since everything else that gets machined now would still have demand behind it, too).
Fair, and I largely agree, especially about 3D Printed guns. But I suspect that the situation with both would change rapidly in the OP’s scenario. I suspect the profit margins on black market guns would mean that a lot of small-shop machining would find delays for its other business, and we’re leaving out modern iterations of various zip guns that could be turned out relatively easily, although they, much like current 3D printed guns, would be problematic if made by unskilled labor.
Since you said guns could simply be made again, it wouldn’t make much difference. With factories and 3-D printing and everything, I’d expect we’d have 100 million firearms in the world again in less than a year.
I’d probably try to get out of my ETF’s and get into buying gun stocks directly.
3D printed guns don’t really explode. I mean, if you try to 3D print a barrel with plastic, yeah, good luck to you. But a barrel is just a metal pipe (roughly), and you can 3D print a lot of the other components. Then there is the whole 80% lower thing, and basic machining.
There’s no way any legislation is going to be passed that faster than simply firing up the assembly lines again tomorrow.
I wonder how insurance companies would respond to the sudden disappearance? Home owners, but also, gun show owners?
And does the whole weapon disappear? Or also all parts related to the weapon? If I have some AR-15 barrels and some AR-15 receivers, what disappears?
I’d really, really love to see what happens with the narco situation in Mexico.
With things magically disappearing, I think the lack of guns would be the least of our worries.
Yeah. The guns are replaceable, but what wouldn’t go away for a long time is how people would freak out in all sorts of ways about a blatant, widespread apparently magical vanishing of something. There’d be religious movements, conspiracy theories of all types, massive scientific debates, and more.
That said it would greatly help gun control for America’s guns to vanish. Without the constant flood of guns over the border from America’s ocean of guns, other nations could actually get a handle on the problem during the period where the guns are being replaced and the hoarders hiding them away.
Also, some unstable authoritarian governments might fall due to the sudden perception of weakness. Especially if mobs start overwhelming suddenly unarmed soldiers and gain enough momentum for a full-fledged revolution to start.
We already do. \
True on the first part. More or less now you can make a sort of zip gun single shot thing with 3d printing.
Right.
Your cite says
“What should scare the attorneys general and US senators is that in most of their states, people who have a history of violent crime already have legal access to “regular” firearms that are not produced using a 3D printer, but are much more lethal”
which kind of goes against your first point. Criminals buy guns all the time.
Case in point: when my credit card number got ripped off by my local dumpling shop, it was used to buy automatic weapons. One set was shipped to LA. I got the address. I talked to the local cop who turned out to be the expert on this in his precinct. He told me that the bad guys hung out in front of the address (which was an abandoned building) and picked up the guns from the delivery guy. The gun shop didn’t bother to note that the address they gave was not mine. Of course the delivery guy didn’t check that the people who took it were the person it was addressed to.
Less vetting than buying a box of diapers.
Really, the only hope in the scenario is that the military would take the guns for themselves.
Well, for the past few months, anyway. It hasn’t been nearly long enough yet for that to have an effect.
Practically speaking, a gun is just a barrel. If you have a suitable barrel, you can make “the other components” with a nail and a rubber band. And if you just use an ordinary metal pipe from a plumbing supply store (which is what folks usually do for a cheap homemade gun, both before and after 3D printing became available), you’re back to the explode-in-your-hand problem.
I’m picturing a rise in 20mm home defense weapons.
It’s not a pretty picture!
If all firearms magically disappeared, I would make them magically reappear. Both events are equally probable.
They do. However, anyone with a felony record cant buy a gun, and Biden got a Gun control bill pass that will stop most “straw man dealers”. And, you cant buy 'automatic" weapons. Also, no one will ship except to a FFL dealer.
Felons have been blocked from buying guns from a registered dealer for decades now. The system is getting better and better. of course crooks will just buy guns from a "straw man dealer’ but Bidens newish law has put a big crimp in that- a lot of them have been arrested and charged.