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Accurate_Reporter252 t1_j8ztdti wrote

Reply to comment by crimeo in [OC] Gun Homicide Rate vs. Gun Ownership Rate in the United States by Social_Philosophy

I'm not sure cheap is a term I would use with banning guns in the US.

First problem is that about 1/3 or more of the population disagrees and has the means--economic, hopefully--to make it very awkward to ban them and keep a government in power.

Additionally, the whole rest of the Bill of Rights would need to be tossed in order to succeed with banning guns in the US. No right to privacy (lest people get together to form resistance to the policy or make guns on their own), no right to assemble, no right to a jury trial (how do you convict people when a third or more of the jury agrees with the accused on these policies?), no right to a whole lot of other things.

And the black markets that will come up quick.

I mean, they banned alcohol for a decade or so and created organized crime families that lasted for decades beyond...

Ignoring, of course, the fact you'll likely have half the states in the country trying to start a Constitutional convention or secede or just stop listening to the Federal government.

Not sure cheap is the word I would use.

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41tru t1_j91m6dh wrote

Why would you throw out the entirety of the Bill of Rights? You could just throw out amendment 2, or nullify it.

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Accurate_Reporter252 t1_j92yw9z wrote

TLDR: Banning guns sounds easy, but you can't enforce it without trashing the other rights.

So, you ban guns.

There are over 400 million in circulation. These guns can last (effectively) over 100 years and people can make and do make them at home.

They also share how to make them with each other and that's protected under the 1st Amendment.

So, are you just going to leave 400 million guns out there with over 1/3 of the population who don't particularly care about gun laws?

No, you're going to have to go get them.

And then you're going to want to prosecute these people.

So, first you have to stop them from sharing information about guns, how to avoid getting caught, how to make guns, and how to hide them plus how to organize a resistance--violent or political--and that means chucking the right to free speech and privacy.

You're going to have to go into these people's homes and places of business to collect these guns.

There's no way in hell you're getting past all of the judges requiring definitive evidence to grant a warrant. There goes warrantless searches.

Oh, and once you have these people in hand, putting them in front of a jury to convict them when the odds are a good chunk of the jury isn't going to find them guilty is a massive waste of time, effort, and good will.

Beyond the fact you need at least 6 jurors typically and trying 100 million people for possession would require either career jury members or about 600 million people in a country with less than half of that in adults and--without knowing who is who--you're at risk of massive jury nullification.

Oh, and by convicting 1/3 of the population, who's going to grow the food and pay the taxes for the massive amount of new prisons?

You're probably going to need to bring back slavery to allow you to force them to grow food while in prison.

Finally, you can't take any new votes.

Once you piss off and alienate that many people, you're going to have an uphill battle every step of the way after that and it puts so many political hijinks on deck for the rest of the country's existence.

Imagine just losing enough of an election once to have people try to overturn such a policy?

Even if you stepped in militarily again, you start looking like Liberia in modern times: All the trappings of a good government and coup after coup with mock elections.

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crimeo t1_j902wii wrote

> 1/3 or more of the population disagrees / Ignoring, of course, the fact you'll likely have half the states in the country trying to start a Constitutional convention or secede or just stop listening to the Federal government

Why would a state that voted to ban guns try to secede over banning guns? The whole starting premise of the conversation here is that 3/4 of states already agreed to an amendment.

It is implied of course in this hypothetical that the country actually wants to do it and is literate about the data and cares about people not randomly pointlessly dying etc. and decided to become a modern civilized country already.

> No right to privacy

Right to privacy isn't one of the bills of rights... but also you don't have privacy about sales of anything anyway, you need to report sales of things for taxes, for one, whenever asked. The main thing here is banning sales, not ownership.

> no right to assemble

? Nothing to do with the conversation

> no right to a jury trial

?? What on earth? Even less to do with the conversation. The parentheses explain nothing about how this is remotely relevant.

> And the black markets that will come up quick.

Black markets require something to sell. If legal guns aren't for sale anymore, where are they getting their stock from? Random reasonable citizens aren't just selling their guns to criminal syndicates, and you can't just whip up advanced firearms in your garage.

> I mean, they banned alcohol for a decade or so

  1. Like half the world has banned guns, where unlike alcohol, things worked completely fine. So they are clearly totally different situations.

  2. There's a pretty obvious REASON why they're different, too: You can make your own alcohol with some fruit, and buckets, and a bit of copper tubing. You cannot casually make your own AR-15 with scrap wood, plumbing pipe, and eyeglasses or whatever.

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