Well, considering that the cops/stormtroopers/Government-sanctioned Gun-Patrol Leprechauns would most likely take the guns away before the body cools off, that’s not very likely…
true
err… leprechauns ???
Who better than the wee fair folk to go a-huntin’ for firearms?
One thought these threads always bring to my mind is “Just who do you expect will actually go out and perform these forcible confiscations?” The rank and file of law enforcement, surprisingly, to the gun-control crowd, is quite pro-gun. Ditto for most members of the two branches of the military that could possibly be tasked to do this: the Army and Marine Corps. Want to call up the National Guard? Guess what? That’s your next-door neighbor and he owns guns himself. The BATF? Possibly, although there really aren’t that many agents trained to do forcible warrant executions. Many of them seem to be little more than neanderthal thugs chosen from the ranks of the BATF for maximum machismo and limited tendencies to question questionable orders. I may soon be going back into the ranks of law enforcement (I need a job with a schedule I can work around school and I have prior experience in the field). I certainly would refuse any confiscation warrant I felt to be unconstitutional or immoral. Knowing some of the gun owners I do, if I were forced to execute such a warrant on their property, I’d want serious backup, as in a 81mm mortar with HE and WP shells. General confiscation just can’t happen in this country unless a lot of things change. The last thing the average cop on the street wants to do is take guns away from lawful gun owners. None of them are willing to be martyrs to the gun-control crowd.
I was in law enforcement at one time. Every cop I knew/know was very pro-gun. They also were married, had families, bills, a mortgage, etc. They didn’t want to loose their jobs over their political beliefs on any one issue. I know of lots of cops who are pro-life, yet still arrest protesters at an abortion clinic. Many cops feel the drinking age should be lower, speed limits higher, marijuana legal, etc., yet still enforce those laws.99% of cops will do as their told, the other 1% will get fired!
Counting on pro-gun police not to enforce a ban is foolish.
pkbites: *If you’re talking to me, you should have noticed that my OP specifically stated that there were no black helicopters or dictator. *
Well, that makes a nice change, at least. :rolleyes:
How long is long? Longer than, say, 212 years?
And when are you going to stop beating your wife?
If you want a model for how your country may wind up, have a look at Canada. We’re about 20 years ahead of you in the gun elimination program.
Canada had a ‘gun culture’ much like the U.S. does. And we have had a high percentage of gun ownership. Ten years ago, buying any sporting rifle or assault rifle was simply a matter of showing your ‘F.A.C’ (Firearms Acquisition Certificate) to a proprieter of a sporting goods store, and walking out with your gun. The FAC was nothing more than a rubber-stamp certificate that involved a simple background check for violent felony convictions, and once you got it for a nominal fee (I think I paid $10) was good for five years.
Handguns were a bit tougher - you had to buy the gun, go to the police station with the serial number, get a conveyance permit to go and get the gun and bring it to the police, then after some waiting period you’d get the gun back along with a conveyance certificate that allowed you to travel with it to gun ranges, shows, events, whatever. The rules were pretty liberal. If you were pulled over and had a handgun in the car, the police would basically just check that it was being carried properly (in a locked case, empty), and that was it.
Then we had a ban on assault rifles, similar to your own. Then the Liberals came into power, and within a year we had a series of bans on various types of guns. Handguns over a certain magazine capacity, more semi-auto rifles, a few accessories.
Then the big whammy came - national gun registration. Every citizen has to register their firearm with the police. To enforce this, the government gave the police powers to search homes WITHOUT WARRANT upon mere suspicion that an unregistered gun was inside. The citizens voted for this.
Another way they have tried to enforce compliance was to have a sliding scale of registration costs. Register your gun the first year, and it’s only $20. But wait a year, and it’ll be $100. That sort of thing.
The next step was to change the FAC from a mere background check into a ‘license’ that requires completion of a firearms safety course from an ‘approved’ gun range. (Want to limit ownership? Just make it impossible to find an ‘approved’ gun range, and no one can get a license). This license is now required even to buy ammunition, so those people who already own guns are forced to comply to buy ammo for them. The cost of the FAC has also gone up dramatically, plus you have to pay the cost of a course. So just thinking about buying a gun now will cost you a couple of hundred bucks just to jump through the necessary hoops.
You see how this is going? The first step is to basically freeze the amount of guns in the country, by making the purchase of a new gun so time-consuming and annoying that casual buyers won’t do it. Then make gun ownership so expensive with annual or bi-annual registration fees and such that some people start selling off their guns, or thinning our their gun collections. Ratchet up the fees and requirements slowly over a period of years, and no one will notice. Each change will be minor enough not to trigger protests. No one is going to march in the streets because a registration fee increases by $5, or a waiting period increases by a couple of days. Then once they are used to the new situation, do it again…
The thing that should frighten gun owners in the U.S. is that Canada went from having a gun culture and gun freedoms almost as universal as those in the U.S. to the situation we have today in 10 short years, with the full approval of the population. Of course, that means with the full approval of urban voters in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, and other large cities, who make up the majority of the population. Out here in the west, the entire province of Alberta was against it. But the majority has spoken.
That’s the way it’ll happen in the U.S. and it won’t be the people in Montana voting to remove their own guns. It will be voters in New York and LA voting to have all the guns in Montana registered and confiscated.
In the grand scheme of things, that’s an instant.
Point taken, though.
Certainly, there is no encouragement for private citizens to own firearms on the part of the government. At best, there is a grudging allowance to own them within limited circumstances and increasingly varied and contradictory laws, paperwork, and red tape.
I think anyone who follows these debates here knows I am not only a gun owner and user, but I am rabidly anti-banning and pro-gun.
That having been said - when they outlaw my guns, I will follow the letter of the law exactly and turn them in, destroy them, or whatever they ask of me. Because I, as one person, can make no difference, affect no change by resistance, other than to end my own life, livlihood, or career by becoming a criminal.
I obey 100% of all Federal, State, County, City, and other laws with my firearms. That will not change.
Kind of naive, don’t you think? I could go into a long rant about how the Second Amendment exists to enumerate our right to take arms against tyrannical government, and that politicians fear nothing more than an armed populace, but those have already been covered to great lengths. Getting Congress to repeal a law is akin to regaining virginity in terms of difficulty or probability of success.
Back to the OP: Yes, the legislators and sociofascists like Sarah, Hillary, Chuck, et al. learned from the Fabians that incremental erosion is the safe way to go.
Unfortunately, there is no “good” way to respond. Of course, we keep lobbying. Of course, we keep advocating and educating. Of course, we keep introducing our friends and family to the responsible use of firearms and let them know why firearms are important.
When and if that fails, and I agree that it probably will, I fear the only thing to do will, in fact, shoot the people who come for the guns. If cops are afraid to enforce the law (which many are opposed to in principle anyway), there may be enough groundswell to avert a guerrilla revolution. I remember a quote I saw in a letter to the editor in a shooter’s magazine a few years ago: “When the time comes you start talking about burying your guns, it time to start using them.”
It’s a terrible option, but one that will quite possibly become the only one left if things continue to erode. Personally, I hope I don’t live to see it happen.
Another thing . . . the Constitution has a built in adaptation mechanism. It can be amended. And those amendments can change or repeal previous amendments. There’s precedent. Prohibition was made a part of the Constitution by amendment. It was later repealed by amendment.
No part of the Constitution is so holy it cannot be changed. Someday, perhaps, the second amendment might be changed or repealed. If that day comes, the people of this nation will be resoundingly opposed to some or all of it.
So, then, for my fellow gun owners, would you oppose the Constitution if such an amendment were passed?
sewalk raises a valid point. Just who the heck would do the grunt work of enforcing a sweeping ban against the vast number of firearms owners in the U.S. It’s more than problematic; it’s likely the death knell for any type of legislation that does more than simply chip away at the right to keep and bear arms. This is why legislation is aimed at the facets given to us here by Tedster.
Much of the current and past gon control legislation is designed to make it inconvenient and costly to own firearms. Eventually, it’ll become too inconvenient and your right will simply evaporate.
Another thing sewalk’s post demonstrates is the why it will unlikely be necessary for the citizenry to rise up in arms against the government. There will simply be no one to fight. The folks tasked to take your guns actually support your right to own them. So the next time the pro-control faction asks if you believe your guns are sufficient to fight against a vastly superiorly armed body, you can recall this argument as support they are.
Damn good post, Sam Stone. Thanks. I’d like everyone here interested in this argument, on either side to take note of the slippery slope in action. As I’ve ling said, the slippery slope argument is valid. Here we actually see it an action. It can no longer be denied.
This thread, despite it’s somewhat flawed initial premise, has proved to be a pretty good discussion of some of the side issues of gun control.
Anthracite has made the only responsible remark on this thread from a pro-gun supporter. I personally am not into guns, although I own a couple. What worries me is that some of you are paranoid about this subject. pkbites says it may take 300 years for it to happen, but then asks what we would do. I guess the most pro-gun answer to that would be turn over in my grave. He is also worried about the California laws. Well I don’t know why anyone would need an AK47.
Personal story I fired a man and his wife. He called and said he was going to kill me. I took out a warrant for his arrest. In the process of stopping him (and his wife) the police chief of a small town was shot 19 times by a AK47. That is why I don’t understand why anyone needs such a weapon.
While I commend Anthracite’s loyalty, I’m afraid I don’t agree.
I had a gun, though it was confiscated. Some day soon I plan to purchase another, most likely next month when the yearly bonus checks come.
If the government, at any level, asks me to remove my gun from my house, they will literally have to take it from me. There will not be voluntary cooperation from erl, no siree. I will go to jail for that. I like the checks and balances our government has; I feel the final check against govnerment aggression is armed citizens. I will not hesitate to go to jail for what I think is right.
Sam, excellent words.
Please explain how your gun got confiscated.
Unc - I’d hardly say one instance constitutes proof of anything. But if you’d like to debate slippery-slope arguments generally, I’ve opened up a thread here.
Possession of a loaded weapon in my car in OH. The circumstances surrounding it are, in hindsight, amusing, but not worth revealing unless prompted (longish story).
Had I lived a few states south there would be no problem. I still consider moving to one such state some day in the future… for now, I just grit my teeth and bear it.