Good luck getting hundreds of skilled artisans, tons of machinery and continuous streams of supply to operate as efficiently and unmolested in America.
You can do whatever you want in the Pakistan boonies. They don’t exactly have a strong central government out there.
This is the problem with political discourse today. It isn’t enough to say “My idea is better than your idea.” Too often it immediately jumps to “My way will bring Salvation-your way will bring Armageddon!”
Innocent kids wouldn’t have to be sacrificed to the alter of the NRA…that’s what would happen.
And in days most of the gun enthusiasts would be dead.
Slavery couldn’t end the union. Assuming the coalition necessary to amend the constitution in the OP, there is no way some fat middle aged men with hunting rifles are going to overturn the government.
Lawl. Are you writing for Glenn Beck now?
We have a couple thousand miles of porous borders which have leaked through millions of illegal immigrants, millions of tons of drugs, etc., I see no reason why that model ceases to work for guns.
I can’t comment on the OP because it’s at this point in time an impossible scenario, and even if the 2nd was repealed I see no reason the government would go out of its way to make trouble for itself. It would instead be a gradual, systematic, steady approach just like in the UK, where eventually only farmers, wealthy suburbanites, or the “nobility” get their hunting rifles and shotguns, and a black market for handguns thrives for criminals.
Neither you nor I believe in Salvation, but otherwise, I mean what I posted. A serious attempt to confiscate guns will lead to civil war, and this nation will cease to exist.
What you are proposing is a regime on guns that is more restrictive than most countries in the world - quite a shift! However, given your secenario:
There would still be many,many guns all over the country. People would not willingly give them up. There could never be enough enforcement personnel to put any kind of dent in the numbers. People would be very creative about where they would hide their guns. People would work together to foil the authorities.
The black market would be huge, and would be supported by a large percentage of the population. Those with the means would be able to get a gun easily.
If gun manufacturing was stopped, there would be big money to be made illegally importing guns from other countries. Big money + illegal = big crime. Some major gangs and crime bosses would be created. International criminal organizations would get interested.
All in all, a no-win scenario.
What Lobohan said plus note the cost.
The guy wants to sell the pistol for $50. Average annual income in Pakistan is about $370. That is 13.5% of an average Pakistani’s income to buy one pistol. Despite that price those guys didn’t look like they were living large from huge profits of $50,000/day in sales. Either their margins are shit or someone else is absconding with the lion’s share.
If that percentage held true in the US that pistol would cost $4,455.
You can’t just say, “Tomorrow the Second Amendment is repealed. Day after tomorrow Federal Agents are going from house to house, searching for guns, and imprisoning anyone with a gun and shooting anyone who resists. OK, what would really happen next?”
You can’t just wave a magic wand and repeal the Second Amendment. An amendment to the constitution requires ratification by 3/4ths of all state legislatures. And that means that 17 states can block any such amendment.
Therefore, to pass this amendment you’d have to imagine either one of two scenarios. Either public opinion has changed radically overnight, such that gun control has become wildly popular, or we no longer have a democratic form of government.
If we no longer have a democratic form of government, the fascists rounding up guns will be just one of any number of horrible things that will be happening, such that the reactions of gun owners will be a footnote. How the heck did we become a dictatorship? What is the dictatorship’s power base? What path of events led to the dictatorship? And of course, while it’s an article of faith that the first action of a dictator must be to disarm the populace, we see in real world examples that just isn’t true. And so on.
For the other scenario, if public opinion has swung massively in favor of sweeping gun control on the British model, well then guns get picked up peacefully, some people bury them in backyards but keep their mouths shut about it, and we go on about as usual.
There’s no point in speculating about what would realistically happen under your scenario, because your scenario requires us to stipulate to an unrealistic hypothetical premise. The only way to speculate realistically about it is to change the scenario to a realistic scenario, but if we do that then your invitation to speculate about the consequences of the gun ban isn’t very interesting, either it’s trivial (not much would happen) or it’s background noise to the other problems of the scenario.
I have to call BS on this. Drugs and booze get you high/drunk, guns give you power. I would argue that for a lot of people that latter is far more attractive, particularly in the situation proposed by the OP which would essentially necessitate a level of totalitarianism far beyond anything the US has ever seen.
Anyway, assuming the OP’s scenario did happen, it would likely have been accompanied with some sort of government take-over, either by a massive swing in popular ideology, or some sort of coup. Some people would hand over their weapons nicely, but I think most would either hide or fight back. We’d have some pretty serious rebelion going on here and it would likely result in a second Civil War with the parts of the country that don’t agree with the new government using those very weapons to fight back.
If the ban and confiscation did somehow manage to succeed, a fairly large black market would open up. Sure, it might be difficult to make guns without advanced machinery, but not impossible. Beyond that, I’d imagine you’d still have the military and police with guns, which would easily find their way onto the black market, not to mention guns smuggled in from outside our borders.
All in all, I see the US quickly falling into political turmoil, which likely throws the global balance of power off as well, which could have all sorts of unforeseen consequences. In short, it would be a pretty crappy situation domestically, and not exactly peaches and cream elsewhere either.
Fill yore hand, you sonuvabitch!–Rooster Cogburn.
A lot depends on the background of how the 2nd amendment was repealed. If it was the result of a sustained campaign by the anti-gun side and had wide support, then probably nothing much would happen. If it was a President stood up and yelled "I’m supreme dictator for life now! Fuck the Constitution, it don’t apply anymore!’ then not only would I expect violence against the government, I’d encourage it.
That being said, your scenario is exactly what I think anti-gun people should do. The Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms. Change the Constitution under the methods it provides. Repeal the 2nd amendment. That’s what it took when Americans wanted to keep getting drunk. One of the things I despise the most about much of the anti-gun crowd is how they handwave away the Constitution with ‘it doesn’t mean what it says…’
I sincerely hope that the people predicting bloodbaths and civil war in this thread are assuming the latter scenario.
Is the illegal gun trade in Japan big crime?
Quoth Oakminster:
Forever is an awfully long time, isn’t it? I mean, even if we grant for the sake of argument that an armed populace is somehow magically crucial for the maintenance of civilization, wouldn’t some other gun-embracing nation eventually rise out of the ashes and start the cycle anew?
Quoth Una:
Leaking through from where? It’s a basic fact of osmosis that things flow from areas of high concentration to low concentration… But our neighbors are already low concentration.
Coming up with a semi-plausible scenario for this to happen.
It can’t be that the Second is revoked by Constitutional Convention, or anything like that. Too many people who value the Bill of Rights the way it is. Therefore -
Several Supreme Court justices die at once. Obama manages to get them replaced with extreme leftists, who simply rule that the Second Amendment means that only the military, police, and government employees can keep or bear arms. Their ruling includes the finding that the Second Amendment also means that all other ownership is outlawed.
Best case scenario is that this gets tied up in litigation for long enough to get those who voted for it impeached and removed from office. Failing that, stall on the process of all the warrants needed to do the searches and find all the guns.
If the Supreme Court rules that warrants are not needed, then yes, there will be shooting. Think Ruby Ridge times about a million. And many of the red states, as well as the saner of the blue, will simply refuse to implement the rulings. The feds don’t have the resources for a house-to-house search of the whole country.
Most likely is that it leads to a backlash, either with or without the house-to-house searches, and Obama is voted out of office in 2012 and the Republican who replaces him issues blanket pardons of everyone who failed to turn in their weapons, and nominates Justices who actually respect the Constitution.
Regards,
Shodan
Well, you’ll have to clamber up and look. I’m too old and too fat.–Rooster “The Dude” Cogburn. 
Who writes your stuff-William W. Johnstone?
We do not need to hijack this thread (start another or read up on one of the few million already done on the topic here) but it needs to be said there is honest and legitimate contention about what the constitution is saying in the 2nd Amendment (Hint: has to do with “militia”).
To hand wave away anyone who wants gun control as willfully flouting the constitution is just wrong.
This makes no sense. The Supreme Court could nullify the Second Amendment, but all that would mean is that laws that violated the Second Amendment would be upheld. The Supreme court couldn’t ban guns, it could only stand by and allow legislatures to do so.
Even if that extreme leftist Barrack HUSSEIN Obama could pack the court with extreme leftists, it wouldn’t have the result you imagine.