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This weekend, I visited my friendly local gun store, idly browsing for shotguns and learning about interstate purchases. Then I drove to my parents and spent the evening playing board games. It was a nice night with good food, drink and company.
Meanwhile, five minutes up the highway, some lunatic was murdering random strangers at a local shopping mall.
No one I know was killed. No one I know personally was present—though a friend of a friend was. I didn’t hear about it until the next morning. Big nothingburger, right? And yet I’ve been to that mall. I’ve been to the bar across the street with my coworkers. If I’d had an errand or three to run, instead of visiting my family, I might have been cowering in a storeroom or staring at a splatter of brains on the sidewalk.
I’m not linking to any articles. Partly for the thinnest veneer of opsec, partly because media coverage is predictably terrible. All sympathetic pictures and, as we’d say here, recruiting for a cause. Nothing good will come of this. Either we’ll force through a knee-jerk bill with symbolic limits on firearms, or we’ll (correctly) dismiss that as posturing and (incorrectly) do abso-fucking-lutely nothing.
It’s not like I can do anything about it. I don’t know what I would actually expect to work, and if I did, how could it be brought about? State, even local politics is as tribal as it gets. Enjoy your a la carte selection of two options, and one of them is out of stock.
Meanwhile, I guess the best I can do is pick up some CCW training and a good holster. Fuck.
Mostly because it's a truism.
Real question is how many gun deaths would occur in the process of trying to enforce the confiscations.
Estimate about 50 million gun owners in the U.S., conservatively estimate 1% of them decide to put up a fight rather than comply. Conservatively estimate that in 10% of such encounters that at least 1 LEO is seriously injured or killed.
50,000 casualties. Out of ~800,000 police officers in the U.S.
And this is assuming large-scale compliance by gun owners, and a relatively low rate of LEO injury. Granted it'll probably be spread out over the course of years.
And one cannot ignore the fact that 3D printers can turn anyone into a gun manufacturer too.
It will be much closer to zero than that. Especially after they shoot the first one who gets physical with them (without even using the gun). And destroy the houses of the first few who give "boating accident" lines.
If you're working off the assumption that there won't be equal amounts of escalation as there will be compliance in response to heavy-handed tactics by government agents...
Well, cowabunga it is.
Or perhaps more recently and less spectacularly:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff
It's weird to hold the idea that some portion of legal gun owners are ticking time bombs willing to throw their lives away to kill random people if pushed to far, but that there WON'T be some amount of violence and deadly attrition if the government sustains a campaign of door-to-door confiscations.
And of course can't get around the fact that the violence is being INITIATED by the government in these instances.
I think in both cases the "some" is very small. The US government declares "Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them all in" and enforces it through door-to-door confiscation, they'll do it with very little bloodshed. What little there is will be almost all on the formerly law-abiding gun owner's part.
I guess we're both without real precedent to point to in the U.S. for universal door-to-door confiscations of any item of importance or value.
But I do note that the U.S. has a long and storied history of individuals telling cops to fuck off when they come to the door.
Like, the State of Texas chose not to go after a single, particularly well armed family for 15 years.
Do I doubt they could have gotten them? No.
But imagine the cops having to make a similar calculus, times 1,000,000 households.
You assume that a few 'examples' being made of people putting up resistance will break the morale of the rest.
Not clear why the flip-side, a dozen or so cops getting capped in the process of serving warrants during the initial weeks of the confiscation effort wouldn't also demoralize their side.
Why do we assume the unshakeable will of LEOs vs. the meek compliance of the American citizenry?
There won't be a dozen or so. There might be one. They would respond with overwhelming force, and further confiscation would be done by cops in full riot/stormtrooper gear, and that would be the end of that.
It's not the will of the LEOs, it's the will of the confiscators giving them orders. There will be enough LEOs who won't push back on their orders.
I see your point, but I do think the truth is somewhere between you and @faceh.
The number of those who resist will be far below 1%, but they'll be incredibly proficient, well-trained, and armed. I personally know some crazies that would successfully kill multiple cops if we progressed to door-to-door confiscation.
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I don't really put much stock into this in a post-Floyd world. I imagine that, in your hypothetical scenario, by Week 3 of the Great Gun Confiscation, officers will start conveniently calling in sick.
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Those cops have to go home after work, yes?
Like, you're aware that these policemen have lives and families which are not hardened against attacks?
I'm really curious as to what your precedent is for assuming there's not some significant portions of the population that is willing to get froggy even if the cops go full Waco.
Like, Waco fucking happened, that's a precedent here. 4 agents dead, 16 injured in ONE standoff.
That wasn't even a universal confiscation push.
Bluntly, I find your position actively ignores the sheer numbers and actual precedent.
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