To answer what paranoid tendency I started the thread over, having Presidential candidates endorse it, and large coastal newspapers editorialize it in the last ten days.
The rhetoric they are expressing is to disarm Americans by taking away their guns, either by forced compensation that non gun owners would have to pay thru higher taxes, or by forced turn ins with no compensation at all.
If Americans are still buying them anyway - goes to how much we actually think it would happen. We really are voting with our dollars. Threats aren't stopping us. The "harsh" consequences meted out to those rebellious enough to force others to turn their guns in? I give you the Brady Ranch confrontation - and that was about an unpaid grazing rights issue.
Again - it's been estimated that 75% of the "assault weapons" held by citizens in NY state haven't been registered according to the law. CA has already had the same non-compliance. The only things we hear about are the old boy shooting squirrels back east with one who got turned in by his neighbors. Incarcerating him puts the burden of administrating his health care on the local jurisdiction, if it's an issue. Most county or state governments don't want or need thousands of new eldercare to handle thru their existing structure. We can't even build highways fast enough and housing them with their issues isn't a win win in the disarmament race.
People who are clamoring for confiscation aren't considering the REAL issues.
There won't be any "harsh circumstances." Compliance will be openly defied and already is. Do we have 330 million guns? Ok. What price compensation? At $100 a gun - instant lawsuit for almost any jurisdiction as that is not adequate compensation, much less our property rights under the 5th Amendment. Even that would mean a $33 BILLON dollar payout which WE would have to foot.
Mention that to the next person who endorses confiscation. Where's $33 billion lying around in the budget? I suspect an amount like that needs to elbow out other more important things, forecast ahead of time, and accounted for by a new staff commissioned to handle the disbursements.
I'm sure we need that kind of boondoggle. Who are we going to appoint as the Director of Compensation? You and I won't make the recommendation, it will come from the White House Staff and they will be handing out rewards to their political underwriters, or as plum rewards. Eric Holder? Emanuel Rahm?
Trading snarky remarks over it isn't analysis, and that is what we need to be doing. Examining the whole prospect of why it won't ever be reality.
Put your thinking caps on, and you quickly see why all the calls for confiscation are just downright stupid. This is America, not Australia, we do have 330 million guns, and extremist politicians and editors are spouting inflammatory rhetoric with no chance of it happening. Just like "the Republicans are starving seniors." It's nothing more than hot air on their part meant to stir up emotion.
What we are waiting on is for the analysis, and it's so negative in outcome it's not going to be discussed openly because the press then has to admit it was stupid to begin with and never deserved the headlines they are giving it.
