K.Mooneyham wrote: ↑Thu Sep 19, 2019 10:41 pm
I think a few things get overlooked in this topic. One, the power of people to simply ignore things, for starters. Even in Europe, where most guns are illegal or heavily regulated, people retain firearms. And they do NOT have our history behind them, a history of personal ownership of firearms. Two, the capacity of police officers who don't really want to enforce something to simply not see the thing they are supposed to enforce. Third, the fact that state and local police just might not agree with a law of the type y'all are discussing (please refer to various sherrifs around the nation who have stated they won't waste resources enforcing new gun control laws). Finally, the complete inadequacy of the Federal government to obtain enough personnel willing and able to go forth and spend day after day confiscating firearms by whatever means, be it door-to-door or pulling over random people and searching their vehicles. Plus, the more draconian something like that turns, the more it will irritate people. I'm just a dumb mechanic, though, so what do I know.
You know more than a lot of people, so don’t sell yourself short. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. When you look at the compliance rate in states like New York and Connecticut regarding MSRs and "high capacity" handgun and rifle magazines, it’s something less than 1% .... and nobody in law enforcement seems willing to pursue it any further.
From my own
personal experience..... Back in the 1990s, the city of Pasadena, California, passed a local ordinance requiring registration of ammunition purchases. Besides the absolute immorality of the law, it faced several very practical challenges that made it unenforceable, but there were two main ones.
#1: For one thing, Pasadena is not a huge town. One could drive 10 minutes, and buy all the ammo one wanted in Arcadia, Altadena, South Pasadena, and Eagle Rock — all towns with city limits contiguous to Pasadena's, and not having any ammo purchase registration requirements. For another thing, each buyer had to log each purchase as a separate line item on a paper form kept by the cashier before the buyer could pay for the ammo. In addition to the buyer's personal information with address and CDL/State ID number, the information consisted of caliber, quantity, brand, and lot#. So if you went and bought say two 50 round boxes each of American Eagle 230 grain .45 ACP FMJ, a 25 round box of Corbon 180 grain .45 ACP +P JHP, a 50 round box of American Eagle 240 grain .44 Magnum JSP, and a 500 round brick of PMC .22 LR (this would have all been a typical purchase for me at my LGS at the time), that purchase would require 4 separate line items on the city form—each item having my name, address, CDL#, caliber, quantity, and lot#. A couple of times was all it took for me to decide to drive the extra 10 minutes to avoid the hassle. And if that decision was easy for people like me, it was even easier for criminals.
#2: At the time of passage, the city loudly trumpeted its new initiative aimed at "stopping gun violence". The ordinance mandated that these written ammo purchase records be collected from the gun stores and maintained by the PPD, but the city was unwilling to hire the new personnel necessary to staff and administrate this law. Why? Because they literally had no idea how many law-abiding pasadena residents owned firearms and shot them for regular entertainment/practice. They imagined that their scheme would disrupt criminals only, and that the law abiding wouldn’t mind. Pasadena had a population of about 130,000 people at the time, so the ammunition purchase records began to add up quickly. It became a record keeping nightmare for the PPD, and finally, the chief of police unilaterally informed the city manager that he would no longer comply with the administering the ordinance as he was faced with having to pull officers off the street in order to staff the requirement. A few weeks later, the city council quietly repealed the ordinance.
Today, California has a recently passed statewide law with a similar intent. But Las Vegas, Nevada is a 3.5 hour drive from Pasadena, and you can buy 1000 round cases of ammo for cheap in Vegas. They can’t stop and search EVERY car coming down I-15 into California m Nevada, which number in the 100s of thousands per day.....and that doesn’t include all the possible secondary routes. And now that California’s draconian new laws have effectively emasculated the AR15 (so they think), I’m willing to bet that there are THOUSANDS of formerly law-abiding people who kept the original parts when they replaced them with bullet buttons, etc. With no more recourse before the law, there’s no more incentive to try and remain compliant. And I’ll bet a sizable chunk that a lot of them reinstalled the OEM magazine release buttons, and pistol grips, and flash hiders, etc. etc., onto their AR15s, picked up a couple thousand rounds of 5.56 on their next trip to Vegas, and salted it all away for the day when things REALLY go to crap there.
YES, a state can make ownership more onerous, but it can’t eliminate it, and they will push things to a certain point before The People say no more. Lexington/Concorde didn’t happen in a vacuum. When the conditions are right (a thing which we may not
individually get to determine), and The People have collectively had enough, it will happen, and there won’t be a thing the state can do to stop it.
At every approach to a tipping point, there are some who are more willing than others to hoist the Jolly Roger. Even among our illustrious founders, this was so. Some were hotter firebrands than others. Some counseled more patience and negotiations than others. But in the end, it wasn’t so much The People's decision to revolt, as it was the British state's decision to push actions like marching on Lexington/Concorde to
forcibly disarm the colonists. The crown passed all the harassing laws it wanted, and there were relatively minor acts of political vandalism like the Boston Tea Party, and published diatribes of protest in response. But
direct action, with lead flying through the air, didn’t happen until the crown moved to
physically disarm the colonists. THAT is when The People collectively stopped trying to keep the peace between themselves and their oppressors.
So yeah, there are going to always be some who will be more ready than others to hoist the Jolly Roger. And as long as gov’t limits its outrages to simply
harassing the law-abiding,
most people will try to fly low and avoid the radar, while a much smaller percentage of people will be the firebrands who berate both gov’t for its excesses, and berate their fellow citizens for keeping their anger and resentments under control, and being slow to want to take up arms. But as soon as gov’t
actually attacks and tries to disarm a whole town, then I remain convinced that this quiet majority will have had enough, and we'll have Lexington/Concorde all over again
