The Practicality of Gun Bans in America
Above is a link to an article I wrote and published on medium.com. I'd appreciate any feedback. Below is an excerpt:
Let’s imagine that we have a magic wand obtained from an ancient fairy that will instantly and magically collect 100% of these rifles from their owners and pay them (using taxpayer money) “fair compensation”. These rifles in all their configurations run from about $400 to $6,000. You can spend more if you wish. Let’s assume that the average compensation paid will be $1,000. 10 million x $1000 = $10 Billion. That’s conservatively the cost to confiscate (with compensation) every semi-automatic centerfire rifle in the US. It doesn’t include any of the infrastructure or labor costs to collect and destroy these rifles, so the actual cost would be significantly higher.
But, back to our thought experiment:
The wand works! BAM! No semi-automatic rifles in the US. 100% done. Fixed. What happens?
Murders drop from 15,129 to 14,729. That’s about 3%. Or do they?
Do bad guys that would use a semi-automatic rifle give up, or do they switch to another weapon? Do mass shooters start volunteering at the local soup kitchen because AR-15s are unavailable or do they use a semi-automatic handgun like the gunman at Virginia Tech did in the worst mass shooting ever on a college campus and the third deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in the US with 33 killed and 23 injured?
Comments
Many support the NFA of 1934 and its restrictions on full auto firearms.
They also support the Reagan ban on new manufacture of full auto and select fire weapons for the proletariat.
They support the NICs checks system and its inherent re-definition of the word 'people' when used is phrases such as 'The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Gun bans are alive and well in America.
Painting a picture of how potential additional bans may not be effective misses the fundamental point that we have a Bill of Rights that is being ignored on many fronts, and most people in this country simply accept it.
Brad Steele