What would happen.

Before I get to the main topic I want to discuss, I want you to understand I don't want this to be discussion on the pro’s and cons of gun control. I don’t care about your position on the subject of gun control but I’m just curious. With the recent events in our country (U.S.) there is once again a huge out cry from the anti gun control advocates to make even more rigid laws governing the use and owner ship of guns.
My question is if the advocates of got their way and a law was passed to ban all “fire arms”, what do you think would actually happen?

So basically, you wish to discuss the ramifications of gun control without discussing gun control? Or is there a dimension to this that I'm missing?

How about we look at historical models. Pick any major American city where the people have largely been forbidden from possessing legal arms- Washington DC is a wonderful example. The rich and powerful are able to buy the needed permits and higher the goon squads to keep them safe. If you are part of the everyone else, you are prey. While it is possible to own but very complicated to carry in other many of the major cities, the rate of violent, stranger-on-stranger crime is a little lower, but not low.

Conversely, take a state where it was difficult to carry or own, and they have made it easier. Florida used to make it rather difficult to carry a concealed handgun, then they developed the model of what is called "Shall issue". It makes it easier to carry. And in the first five years of Florida having the "shall issue" policy, their violent crime rates dropped in double digit percents every year. During that time, their surrounding states and the nation as a whole had crime rise every year.

And keep in mind, very few countries have ever had the powers granted under the PATRIOT Act. With that, organized gun owners who peacefully protest and challenge a banning bill could be simply declared what other countries have called "enemies of the state" and disappeared in the night. And many of us here would be part of that- we would be declared dangerous "survivalists" and "paranoid radicals". After all, we are adept at living off the land, have stockpiled equipment and supplies, use alternative and unregulated means of communication (hams) and no small number of us are familiar with irregular warfare in theory.

Think about the other nations where people were declared "enemies of the state" and "state traitors". A lot of those were elected, just like ours is. Others were put into power through popular uprising, which is voting of another kind.

Yet another multi-billion Dollar industry supporting the "War on Guns" would seek to suck any remaining funds and liberty from what used to be free men.

Re Raydarkhorse

Could you be a little more specific.

Are you asking what would happen just directly after a full prohibition of guns was passed into law in the US (when an ammendment to the constitution was passed into law to repeal the second ammendment) or the point in time just after when everyone has agreed to the new law and handed their firearms into the authorities?


Edit - Sorry I've just re-read my own posting - I do appologise for asking such a silly question.

You have to look at the UK and Australia for the answer.

A few diehards in Australia were killed when they refused to surrender their weapons, including the actual "Crocodile Dundee" fellow on which the movie character was based upon.

Murder, armed robbery, rape, and a myriad of crimes all soared because the people who weren't allowed to own guns legally (the criminal types), still had theirs because they, of course, kept those weapons that they didn't have, because of earlier laws denying them the right to own weapons.

Meanwhile, the (PHRASECENSOREDPOSTERSHOULDKNOWBETTER.) honest folk were defenseless like so many (sheep) potential victms guarded by too few (sheepdogs) policemen to adequately protect them from the (Big Bad Wolves) armed criminals.

That's how it has been going so far in Australia and the UK.

You have to look at the UK and Australia for the answer.

A few diehards in Australia were killed when they refused to surrender their weapons, including the actual "Crocodile Dundee" fellow on which the movie character was based upon.

Murder, armed robbery, rape, and a myriad of crimes all soared because the people who weren't allowed to own guns legally (the criminal types), still had theirs because they, of course, kept those weapons that they didn't have, because of earlier laws denying them the right to own weapons.

Meanwhile, the (PHRASECENSOREDPOSTERSHOULDKNOWBETTER.) honest folk were defenseless like so many (sheep) potential victms guarded by too few (sheepdogs) policemen to adequately protect them from the (Big Bad Wolves) armed criminals.

That's how it has been going so far in Australia and the UK.

Doesn't the U.S. have one of the highest crime rates in the world, if not THE highest crime rate?

If all the honest common folk lose their guns, and all the criminals retain theirs, are the criminals suddenly going to become really nice people? Or are they going to go hog-wild because they've suddenly got a smorgesbord of victims?

What do you THINK is likely to happen?

Sue

I think more crime will occur,

If gun laws were relaxed in some respects (certainly not in all respects), crime would drop.

If we had a "justice system", then crime would probably drop as well.

The present system has made crime a VIABLE CAREER ALTERNATIVE, with many finge benefits!

Have you been to Australia or the UK? Where did you get your information from? The relationship between crime and the ownership of firearms in these countries does not have any correlation what so ever. But there is a correlation between crime and economic deprivation or should I say where there is a huge difference between rich and poor. As for criminals (Big Bad Wolves) why does the United States of America have more of them than anywhere else. The incarceration rate for criminals in the US has even surpassed that of PHRASECENSOREDPOSTERSHOULDKNOWBETTER. China and the rest of the world combined. There is apparently over 2 million criminals held by State and Federal authorities. I believe that there is roughly 1 person out of every 110 held in prison in the US. That rate is astonishing. As with countries that have liberal (probably the wrong word to use in this debate) gun control laws, countries like Switzerland and Canada again don’t have the nearly the same level of violent criminal behaviour, even though their gun controls laws are similar to the US. As many on this forum have said in their defence to their ownership of a firearm - its not the gun which does the killing, its the individual holding the gun. If that is the case then why is there so much criminality and death through gunshot wounding and why is this so prevalent in the US?

I guesse what I am asking is would the gun owners just give in and give up their guns or would the goverment have to take them? and if they were to take them would that trigger violence?

I heard a statistic the other day that there are something on the order of 300+ million firearms in the United States. I have no idea whether this count includes military and police weapons.

Passing a ban on firearms is a long shot. I think a much more realistic situation is a ban on ammunition & reloading supplies or else a sky-high tax (think "fee") on the same.

The guns won't be very useful if ammunition is hard to come by.

I don't know much about the United Kingdom or Australia, so hopefully someone can chime in here. Is outright ownership of a firearm illegal in and of itself? Or can folks own firearms but keep them in their homes for sporting purposes (target shooting, hunting, etc.)?

If I understand the question my answer would be they (the Gov. or local authority) Will get my wepons when they come to the door and ask for them. BUT they won't get all of my wepons, there are some they know about and some they don't and not all are at my house.
With a law like you are talking about, all you are going to do is to Make a lot of armed criminals. California tryed to make a gun law stick and they have a bunch of armed criminals walking around right now.

Um, right now I think Iraq would have to take first place for crime rate in the world, wouldn't you agree?

Yes, the crime rate in Iraq certainly appears to have increased quite considerably in the last 4 years.

I would say that our crime rate has more to do with our social dynamic than with the prevalence of firearms. Other countries like Canada and Switzerland do not have any of the social issues we in the US have to contend with. It is true that by limiting freedoms in general there is a greater propensity for social limits, and the mindset of most of the citizens of these much more PHRASECENSOREDPOSTERSHOULDKNOWBETTER. countries are much more subservient than ours is.

In Australia, there are quite a few people who are legally registered to own certain firearms, and there are quite a few more who own them illegally. Gun crimes still occur regularly here, perhaps not to the same proportion as they do back home, but most of the more seasoned Aussies I deal with admit that it is still quite easy to acquire a firearm here if you want one. I've had the opportunity in the 6 months I've been here to buy a gun if I wanted to. The gangs here are well armed, and drug crime here is not much different epidemiologically than it is back home.

As for whether diminishing the supply would have any impact on violent crime back home, I doubt it. Just this last friday, some idiot lit off two bombs at my daughter's high school, one equipped with C4 that failed to go off fortunately. Where there's a will, there's a way, and the last group in a society to be disarmed would be the criminals.

If the criminals here can't get their hands on firearms, then they use knives, or clubs, or whatever they can make work. Knives are also outlawed here, yet it is becoming the weapon d' jour for the gang kids.

It isn't the tools they use, it is the will they have, that will make people a threat to each other. We'll kill each other with sticks and rocks and even our bare hands if that's all we are allowed, but the killing will continue nonetheless. Doesn't seem much point in outlawing one if you aren't going to outlaw the lot.

Compare the gun control of today to the gangster days of the thirtys. We've gotten much more restrictive, yet the crime rate today towers over what it was back then. Obviously it isn't the prevalence of the weapons, but the willingness to use them that is the problem.

1.The law abiding citizens would turn there guns in
2.Some former law abiding citizens would be turned into criminals because they were forced to choose between protecting their families or breaking the law(I pray that I am not faced with this decision)
3.Violent criminals would not turn their guns in and they would become more active knowing that their victims were unarmed(hasn't anyone seen the John Stossel jail house interviews)
4.Crime rates would skyrocket
5.Deer and moose populations would increase causing more accidents
6.The various varmint populations would increase causing numerous problems for farmers and ranchers
7.Eventually chaos would take over and the laws would be repealed after it was too late.

I'm sure that I haven't even scratched the surface.

Ammunition and powder have a long shelf life when stored properly, and there is a fairly large amount on the streets. I just don't see people freely giving up their guns. If they (the gun control nuts) get the Second Amendment struck down they should be prepared to strike down Posse Comatatis (sp.?)as well. A lot of previously upstanding, law abiding, tax paying citizens will undoubtedly become guilty of a crime greater than a minor traffic violation. I will certainly be counted among that number. It will take military action to remove all the guns, as the police are already overburdened trying to take "real"criminals off the street. Additionally, I would offer a question for the readers to ponder. If they get our guns, whats next?? Think about it folks. This is a FREE nation and the Second Amendment is one of the reasons why it has remained so. Except for the current problems with illegal border crossings, how many other invasions have ever been successfully mounted against the U.S. on our soil? Ever stopped to think why?

benjammin

I don't think it is the crime rate in Iraq, as mush as it is the death rate.

No, we have the highest per capita incarceration rate of the industrial world with the exception of the People's Republic of China. Then I would invite you to look at the driving factors in the majority of those cases- narcotics. I hate to say it, it feels like betryal, but we are loosing the Drug War, have been since the 1960s.

Actually, the sources used when discussing the UK crime rate come from Her Majesty's Government. And those figures do show that you've had a massive jump in your violent crime rate in the past decade, regardless of category.

Sorry I stand corrected about the incarceration totals, although the United States does have the highest rates of imprisonment in the world, the actual totals are even greater than China which has over 5 times the population. The US total is not greater than the rest of the world combined although it accounts for a very large percentile of the total.

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/r188.pdf

The total imprisoned throughout the world stands at 8.75 million imprisoned. The US accounts for over 2 million of that total figure. Roughly 1 in every 4 people imprisoned throughout the world is an American Citizen.

As the data is some 4-5 years old, the total percentage which would be US incarcerations compared to the overall world total has become even higher.

There has been a jump in the crime figures for violent crime, although according to the same figures provided by the Home Office the overall crime rate has remained steady and in some categories has fallen. A distinction between violent crime and other crimes is made within the UK. I would not describe it as a massive jump, but a problematic year on year increase and has been ongoing even prior to the changing of the concealed gun laws in 1996 when the Dunblane massacre occurred. There has been an attempt to massage the statistics regarding crime rates within the UK by the Government for political expediency. As I have already implied the violent crime rate does not correlate to gun ownership or lack there off within the UK. Gun crime is not really an issued when compared to the year or year rise in overall violent crime figures. The inequity that people feel throughout society whether it is in the UK or the US I believe is the major cause of violent crime. Perhaps Gun ownership in the US just amplifies these effects. Countries which have inclusive rather than exclusive societies have much lower rates of criminality. The inequities within UK society have matched the year on year increase in violent crime in the UK because UK governments has for the past few decades followed the US model of economic development. Within the UK, Scotland has a much more traditional PHRASECENSOREDPOSTERSHOULDKNOWBETTER. perspective than the rest of the UK. Of course, having a more PHRASECENSOREDPOSTERSHOULDKNOWBETTER. perspective on life does not make you less free, it just allows you feel less fear of the unknown.

Lawyers. In a whole lot of countries across the world when you commit a crime, you get put away and or severely punished. Here you get a slap on the wrist, get out and do it again. And again. And again. Some countries put you away for 20+ years for petty crimes. Most murderers dont even do that here.

A couple of astounding figures I heard.

The state of Michigan has as many armed citizens (based on the
number of hunting licenses sold) as the total of the worlds 7
largest standing armies.

The largest money making industry in Washington State (ahead of Boeing and Microsoft) is the hunting industry when you include
hotel, food, gear, etc. involved in the sport.

I'm sorry, but I would hazard that we are more inclusive. Our citizens have sent as many representatives that were born to poor and working class households as rich to Washington. As opposed to having a House of Lords, who I understand are still selected by their fellow members of the peerage rather than the common subject?

We've had territories and subjugated that natives and practiced slavery; that can be said for both countries, but we never did it across 24 timezones. Nor did we never really have colonies.

Or is there something you'd like just say openly about our country? You've done a lot of beating around the bush, and I don't mean the fellow in the White House.

Well, despite oft quoted Japanese Admiral, I think the main reason we haven't had a "successful" invasion is that we have Canada to the north of us and Mexico to the south neither of which is a particularly militaristic country and we have a couple thousand miles of open ocean to the east and west of us. It took a pretty impressive act of military planning to attack Pearl Harbor with anything approaching surprise and that attack just destroyed a lot of ships and facilities. There was no effort to take and hold Hawaii. To land a several million man invasion force on the Californian or Carolina coast and keep the supply lines open is somewhere in the realm of the nonsensical. Even the British as a superpower couldn't successfully maintain an occupying army in 1776 or and invading army in 1812. The strategic and tactical considerations of invading the United States are insurmountable. You could of course land in South America and march up through the rain forest, but that presents its own equally difficult problems. Personally owned firearms don't even begin to factor into the equation.

The forces that the second amendment protects our freedom against is our government and our fellow citizens, not a foreign power.

And yet we managed to do just that to Europe and the Pacific islands during WWII. Admittedly we had the England, Australia, and Hawaii for staging areas but that was only because we could keep the supplies coming in spite of the U-boats and Japanese Navy. If it hadn't been for that we would have had to start from here.

Since we want to help them establish a stable, defensable government designed by Iraqis and get out, I'd have to say they are all in it for personal gain.

Having staging areas is a great advantage. The countries we were fighting were also engaged in two fronted wars, the Germans had us and the Russians, the Japanese had us and the Chinese. In the European theater we lost a vast number of merchant marines while simultaneously working to destroy the U-boat threat. We did have great Britain as a staging area, we also invaded North Africa first and used that as another front to attack Italy. In the Pacific, we mainly fought a holding war until the war in Europe was won. Thus we weren't actively engaged in a two front war the same way either as Germany or Japan. Then we island hopped using each conquered island as a staging area to attack the next island until we could fire bomb and later nuclear bomb Japan itself. Japan also failed to destroy the aircraft carriers of the Pacific fleet which allowed us to provide air support to the troops. We didn't invade Japan until they had surrendered. Against the US you could try to use Cuba as a staging area, but you have to go past Costa Rica and the US Virgin Islands, both of which would make fine air force bases to attack passing ships. Once you got here, the United States is a much larger land mass. Unlike Italy, France, and the rest of the European countries, Florida, South Carolina, or California wouldn't turn into an invading forces allies.

Anyway, arm chair strategies aside, I was just trying to make the point that personally owned firearms are a much, much smaller factor in a decision to invade the United States then say, geography.

1. 90% of law-abiding citizens would comply with the law.
2. 0.1% of criminals would comply with the law.
3. In most of the large metropolitan areas of the country crime would show only a modest increase
3. Crime would measurably increase in all other areas.
4. Violent crimes specifically involving knives would skyrocket across the country while those involving guns would remain constant.
5. There would be calls for banning sharp pointy-tipped knives.
6. Sharp, pointy-tipped knives would be banned.
7. 90% of law-abiding citizens would turn in their knives.
8. 0.1% of criminals would comply with the law.
9. The political party currently controlling Congress and the Presidency (pick one) would establish laws that prohibit criticizing the government.
10. Violent crimes involving knives and guns would remain constant, while those involving baseball bats would skyrocket.
11. There would be calls for banning baseball bats.
12. Baseball bats (and therefore baseball) would be banned.(No big deal. After all, soccor is just so much more egalitarian, isn't it?)
13. While they were at it, football and boxing would be banned as well (too violent.)
14. The Bill of Rights to the US Constitution would be scrapped in favor of a new UN Declaration on Group Rights. After all, who needs individual rights? Only group rights matter in the new Utopia.
15. Violent crimes specifically involving frying pans would skyrocket......

I fear that you may already be at stage 9 even without passing through stages 1 through 8

http://www.progressive.org/mag_mc100406

I think you've detailed the most likely chain of events, based on recent historical (hysterical) events!!!!!

Since banning all firearms would take a constitutional amendment, it isn't likely.

However, if it did happen, they might get all the registered firearms, but that still leaves a few million they don't know about.

SO TRUE!!! And oft understood and forgotten.

"...laws would be repealed..."

Fat chance of that, when was the last time anyone saw a law repealed???

Um, prohibition, no wait, the assault weapons ban, no wait, that one just expired, didn't get repealed.

Agreed. Our culture in the UK is too different for meaningful comparisons. And I agree with those who say it is too late to apply gun controls to America because the genie is out of the bottle.

Agreed. Except I see that as an argument in favour of controls, because knives are less dangerous than guns.

I suspect it would just need a reinterpretation. The amendment can be seen as merely making provision for "a well regulated Militia", that is, a normal standing army. I'm not advocating that, but it has been interpreted that way in the past and could be in the future.

Fortunately the D.C. Federal Court of Appeals struck down the militia intrepretation again last month and held that the 2nd amendment right to bear arms is not limited to militias and is a right of all citizens.