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Bang / Guns Title: The Mathematics of Countering Tyranny [by gungrabbers] The current mass media-driven “debate” on firearms (actually more like paternalistic lecturing or chiding) seems to be leading toward greater restrictions by Congress. The collectivist gun grabbers have the dream of ignoring the Second Amendment and somehow magically removing all detachable magazine semi-auto rifles from civilian hands. But it is just that: a dream. If they think that they can disarm us, then they are thoroughly deluded. I’ll explain why, with some simple mathematics. The United States has the world’s first or second most heavily-armed populace, per capita. (It’s possibly second only to Yemen.) The number of FBI firearms background checks for transfers by Federally-licensed dealers from November 1998 to April 30, 2018 totaled 287,807,015. That isn’t all new guns. It of course includes many second-hand sales that cycled back through FFL holders. But it is still a staggering number. And it does not include any private party (“not through a dealer”) sales of used guns. That is thankfully legal in most states. Nor does it include guns that are legally made at home. (Typically made with 80% complete receivers.) Those home “builds” are becoming quite popular. Their ownership is mostly opaque to any would-be tyrants who might covet seizing them. There are somewhere between 370 million and 420 million privately-owned firearms in the United States. Let’s just call it 400 million for a nice round figure. Most of those guns are not registered to particular owners. That is why there are only rough estimates. It makes me feel good to know that Big Brother has no idea where those guns are, and who owns them. When I last checked, the total U.S. population is 327,708,500. So that is about 1.2 guns per person. The adult population is around 249,500,000. And according to Wikipedia, the “Fit for service” Military Age Male population (men, ages 16-49) of the U.S. is just 59,764,677. That equates to 6.6 guns per Military Age Male in the United States. Of the 400 million American guns, roughly 20% are single-shot or double-barreled, 60% are manually-operated repeaters (e.g., bolt action, lever action, pump action, or revolvers), and 20% are semi-automatic. There are only about 175,000 transferable Federally-registered full autos. That number would have been much larger by now but production was sharply curtailed by a hefty $200 tax (starting in 1934) and then there numbers were effectively frozen in 1986. It is noteworthy that if it were not for the National Firearms Act of 1934, selective fire guns would by now be in what the Heller decision calls “common use“. After all, it costs only a few dollars more to manufacture a selective-fire M16 than a semiautomatic-only AR-15. With every passing year, the predominance of semi-autos is gaining for both rifles and handguns. (In sheer numbers produced, revolvers are becoming almost passé.) The biggest-selling handgun in the country is the Smith & Wesson M&P 9mm, followed closely by the Glock Model 19 9mm. Gaining rapidly is the highly modular SIG P320, which was recently adopted by the U.S. Army. All three of these are semi-automatic. Standard magazine sizes for autopistols range from 13 to 20 rounds. And the most popular rifles of the decade are AR-15s and their clones. Their standard capacity magazines hold 30 cartridges. (That isn’t “high capacity”.) AR-15 and AR-10 variants are truly generic and have been sold under more than 120 brand names. The number of ARs (AR-15s, M4s, AR-10s, and variants) sold from 2000 to 2014 was approximately 5,672,900. Since then, AR-15 clones have become even more popular and ubiquitous with approximately 1.2 million more produced in 2015, 1.6 million in 2016, and 1.5 million in 2017. At least 1.2 million will be produced in 2018. It can be assumed that 99% of the ARs produced since the year 2000 are still functional. There were more than 2.3 million other ARs produced for the civilian market between 1962 and 1999. It is safe to assume that at least 95% of those of that vintage are still functional. So the total number of functional ARs in private hands in the U.S. is somewhere around 11 to 12 million. (As of May, 2018.) Next we come to the more fuzzy math on the wide variety of other models of semi-auto centerfire rifles in private hands. They include detachable magazine, en bloc clip, and stripper clip-fed designs. Here are some rough estimates. (Some of these estimates are based on my own observations of the ratios of different models I’ve seen offered for sale): If a production and importation ban requiring registration were enacted, there would surely be massive noncompliance. For example, the registration schemes enacted in the past two decades in Australia, Canada, The Philippines, Indonesia, Brazil, and the States of California and New York have been well-documented failures. They have been met with noncompliance rates ranging from 50% to 90%. Let us surmise that following several years of a registration scheme there were an outright “turn them all in, Mr. and Mrs. America” ban. I predict that even if $1,000 per gun were offered, no more than 11 million would be turned in, by compliant and history-ignorant Sheeple. (An aside: They’ll probably call this a “Buy Back”, but that will be a lie. They can’t “buy back” something that they’ve never owned.) So let’s suppose that a full Federal semi-auto rifle ban were enacted with a gun confiscation order issued. This is where the math gets very interesting: There are only 902,000 sworn police officers in the United States. At most, about 80,000 of them have had SWAT training. There are only 5,113 BATFE employees–and many of those are mere paper shufflers. As of 2017, there were just 2,623 ATF Special Agents. The FBI’s notorious Hostage Rescue Team (HRT or “Hurt Team”) has a cadre strength that is classified but presumably less than 200 agents. Together, they comprise the pool of “Door Kickers” that might be available to execute unconstitutional search warrants. If they were to start going door-to-door executing warrants for unconstitutional gun confiscation, what would the casualty rates be for the ATF, HRT, and the assorted local SWAT teams? It bears mention that the military would be mostly out of the picture, since they are banned from domestic law enforcement roles, under the Posse Comitatus Act. Next, let’s do some addition and then divide: 80,000 SWAT-trained police … presumably working in teams of 8, attempting to seize 9,000,000 newly-contraband semi-auto rifles. Before we finish the math, I’ll state some “for the sake of argument” assumptions: A lot of those are not safe assumptions. But for the sake of completing a gedankenexperiment, let’s pen this out on the back of a napkin, as a “best case” for an unconstitutional gun confiscation campaign. Here are the division equations: 9,000,000 ÷ 82,863 = 108 (x 8 officers per team) = 864 raids, per officer Let that sink in: Every officer would have to survive 864 gun-grabbing raids. Those of course are fanciful numbers. There will be a lot of false tips, and there will be many owners who keep their guns very well-hidden. Each of those raids would have nearly the same high level of risk but yet many of them would net zero guns. And it is likely that many police departments will wisely decline involvement. Therefore the “best case” figure of 864 raids per officer is quite low. The real number would be much higher. Here is some sobering ground truth: America’s gun owners are just as well trained–and often better trained–than the police. There are 20.4 million American military veterans, and the majority of veterans own guns. Without all six of those, the hostilities would continue. Then there are the estimated 1.5 million unregistered machineguns now in the country. Except for a 30-day amnesty in 1968 that generated only about 65,000 registrations, they have been contraband since 1934. Their number is particularly difficult to accurately estimate, since some semi-autos such as the M1 Carbine, HK91/93/94 series, and AR-15 are fairly easy to convert to selective fire. Similarly, nearly all “open bolt” semi-auto designs are easy to convert to full auto. Large numbers of conversion parts sets have been sold, with little recordkeeping. Some guns can be converted simply by removing sear springs or filing their sears. Just a trickle of unregistered full autos are seized or surrendered each year. This begs the question: If Federal officials have been unable to round up un-papered machineguns after 84 years, then how do they expect to ever confiscate semi-autos, which are 15 times more commonplace? As evidenced by the 1990s wars in the Balkans, when times get inimical, contraband guns get pulled out of walls and put into use. We can expect to see the same, here. Now, to get back to the simple mathematics, here are some ratios to ponder: I’ll conclude with a word of caution: Leftist American politicians should be careful about what they wish for. Those who hate the 2nd Amendment and scheme to disarm us have no clue about the unintended consequences of their plans. If they proceed, then I can foresee that it will end very badly for them. – JWR End Notes: Again, the preceding is a purely conjectural gedankenexperiment about the future that extrapolates from recent history and current trends. None of the foregoing is seditious (per 18 U.S. Code § 2384), nor a call to arms, nor a threat to our government or to any individual, agency, or group. Permission to reprint, re-post or forward this article in full is granted, but only if credit is given to James Wesley, Rawles and first publication in SurvivalBlog (with a link.) It must not be edited or excerpted, and all included links must be left intact. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 6.
#3. To: Tooconservative (#0)
To make the thought experiment realistic, this element must be struck out of it. A government that had the will and the political numbers to strike out the Second Amendment most certainly has the will to simply change a law, which is all that the Posse Comitatus Act is. The Second Amendment is in the Constitution, but the Posse Comitatus Act is a mere act of Congress. You can bet your sweet bippy that, were there to be serious and bloody armed resistance to US law enforcement, such that control were being lost - or that such resistance were ANTICIPATED by Congress - that the Posse Comitatus Act would be modified to permit the Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, Navy, CIA and other normally externally-facing forces to operate internally to the extent necessary to quell any incipient rebellion, or any ANTICIPATED rebellion. A scenario that assumes that government won't use the armed forces from the start is unrealistic. Any actual gun or tax revolt in the USA has to assume that the President will go full Lincoln and Sherman on them, because it certainly will. The more interesting question, from my perspective, is whether or not the military itself would overthrow the government if it were called upon to enforce the dissolution of the Second Amendment. I think that a civil war WITHIN the ranks of the military, and between the military and law enforcement, is much more probable in a gun confiscation scenario than the exclusion of the military from the equation due to some flimsy think like Posse Comitatus. And I think the truth to the whole thing is this: IF the political will existed to actually amend the Constitution to remove the Second Amendment, or significantly curtail it, THEN I expect that gun confiscation would proceed apace, and that if there were a rebellion, a loyal US military and intelligence forces would put it down. To amend the Constitution requires broad political will across the country. Someday, the will may be there to eliminate the Second Amendment, and if that happens, the guns will be substantially curtailed - because the very fact of having moved to amend the Second will mean that the people are aiming at just that. However, short of an amendment, were there to just be a naked federal gun grab by one party, without the constitutional supermajority required, under such circumstances an actual coup d'etat by the US military, or elements of it, is entirely possible. Military people are sworn to uphold the Constitution against all enemies, foreign AND DOMESTIC, and a Congress or President who actively disregards the Constitution and tries to outright crush the Second Amendment without amendment, and who uses armed police force to do it, might find itself overthrown by the US military itself. And then there would be a civil war BETWEEN the military loyalist and rebel units. Unlike royal armies of the past, however, the US military is essentially a professional mercenary force. If the paychecks stop coming, much of the military would desert. There is no fanatical loyalty to any military leader, and no historical record of pillage and self-sustenance by the Army. An unpaid US Army would probably dissolve in a month or two.
I thought so too. Unless they found that the military was defecting or elements of it were aiding the resisters. They could try to do this and find their situation getting worse, not better. I thought this as well. Even so, a national gungrab going door-to-door would likely start out as the author outlined. The ranks of SWAT/BATFE/FBI/cops would be quite thin and they would be quite vulnerable to reprisals.
One of the things that we can thank God for is the fact that America is mostly a politically apathetic place, and therefore "conservative" - in the natural sense that inertia tends to preserve the status quo. We should remember that the ban on machine guns was really inspired by the fact of Prohibition - the public, in resisting another constitutional amendment they really did not like (and, therefore, disobeyed in large numbers), used machine guns on the authority (and were trained in and knowledgeable on the use of said guns from their experience in the First World War, whence they were drafted and dragged because of the desire of a political elite to step into the international arena). Things have cause-effect and knock-on effects. World War I created a generation of aggressive PTSD-conflicted and hard-minded men who also were harder-drinking, and harder-living (as in whoring - how 'you gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paree?) than any since the Civil War. The traditional womanish Protestanty culture was unable to contain a whole generation of veterans of the most violent and horrifying warfare that Americans have ever faced. WWI was MUCH worse for the soldiers than WWII, or the Civil War, because of the PARTICULARLY sustained and grinding nature of the horror, terror and suffering. A whole generation of men was changed, not by choice - American maledom did not leap eagerly to war, they were dragged off into it by the draft, to fight because the elite commanded them to, not because they wanted to. It changed them, and they came back to an America that was the same as they had left it, that didn't want to change, and that wanted THEM to go back to being the nice docile Protestant abstemes they left as. And that was quite unrealistic, quite impossible - another exaggeration on the part of the moral elites of their real power to control things. So they imposed Prohibition, and ended up having war veterans hosing off machine gun bullets into the faces of revenue agents. So they outlawed machine guns. In the end the Christian Ladies Temperance movement lost, and the Constitution had to be amended BACK to let people drink. The rule of law failed. The attempt was made to impose it by force, and THAT create organized crime and a lot of dead cops and revenuers, and alcohol traffickers. And finally, a fig leaf was hung back over the rule of law to ratify the fait accompli: America was not going to be dry, and the Christians who thought otherwise could go stuff it. The country was not dry Protty anymore. The world had changed, never, ever to change back. Same thing today. You see a few parallel things happening. Sex, like alcohol, has broken through the barriers. People are going to have sex, with both sexes, and the government is going to be shoved aside wherever it tries to restrict it. The gay bans are going. The "national security" arguments used to restrict homosexuality in the military were pushed aside and disregarded (and we still see unreconciled old men here twisting their mouths in outrage at it, just like the old Christian Temperance Ladies twisted their mouths grim and dour as their precious Prohibition was swept away, and their beliefs consigned to the ash heap of history). Never again will gay sex be a crime anywhere in America, and anywhere that tries to "hold the line" will be plowed over and under. That's the way it is. The same thing is true of abortion, frankly. I hate this myself, but it is so. Ireland, Catholic Ireland, just voted 2-to-1 to legalize abortion. Game over. Abortion on demand will always be the law of the land. If people don't like abortion, they can decide not to have them, and they can provide their children and others with economic alternatives to raising their children. Nevertheless, abortion on demand will be the law of the land. If Roe is overturned, it will go to the states, and the states will mostly legalize it...and all of the states that have bright economies will do so. Backwaters that rely on federal poverty relief transfer payments may retain an abortion ban. Truth is, the Supremes won't overturn it. Five justices will always be found who simply don't want to touch off the political civil war that will ensue - and be lost - if they ban it. With guns, the public at large wants them. The country is too dangerous, and the police too ineffective and capricious. English speaking monarchies like Australia and Canada can pull off gun control, because in the end their populations are cowed by tradition and "propriety". Americans are not, and will not be. You can ban guns, just like we banned alcohol, and we ban pot. And a huge number of Americans will say FUCK YOU to the law, because they are not going to obey the law where they disagree with it. Hard core conservatives and Christian Temperance Ladies will screw up their sour old faces and dream of using MAXIMAL GERMAN FORCE to impose their will. But in America, they always lose. The Redcoast lost. The slavers lost. The Christian Women lost. The segregationists lost. The gay-haters lost. The racists lost. The drug warriors have lost - we're merely ratifying the legalization of cannibis now. The 55 mph speed limit lost. America is not really a "rule of law" land, it's a REASONABLE rule of law land. Where lots of people think the law is unreasonable, they break it, and if you try TOO hard to force them to obey with cops, they shoot cops. Guns, pot, gays, abortion and demon rum are not going away, and the 55 mph speed limit is not coming back, because Americans want the liberty to dabble in those things, and to drive faster than the ninnies want them to, and they really DON'T CARE all that much that it's against the law. Likewise, Americans are going to hire illegal aliens to watch their kids and cut their lawn and cook their breakfasts, because it's cheaper, and Mexicans are less of a pain in the ass than lower class, drugged-out Americans. Maybe Bork is right and we're all "slouching towards Gemorrah", but Bork lost. And that's the bottom line. They're never going to grab the guns in America. They're never going to ban the abortions. They're going to legalize pot. They gays are going to do as they please and people who discriminate against them are gonna get pounded just like the racists against blacks have been and still are. Large scale immigration is going to continue. Those who would hold the line and try to preserve the past will lose it. Those who would do so with guns will end up Waco-ed. Progress marches relentlessly on, and Christian Ladies cannot stop it. That's the bottom line.
#7. To: Vicomte13 (#6)
Ireland has a very restrictive abortion provision. If only America had the same abortion laws... And that is and should be the goal of the pro-lifers. An complete abortion ban by the Court is almost unthinkable and striking down Roe to return it to state jurisdiction is pretty unlikely. What is more likely to succeed is to outlaw third-trimester abortion (abortion past, say, the 22nd week). And any third-trimester life-of-the-mother exception to supposedly save a woman whose health is claimed to be in danger has to pass muster with an independent board of physicians who are obligated to consider the fetus as a human being but one whose survival is secondary to the mother's health. Just because we can't outlaw abortion or strike down Roe (to send abortion law back to the states) doesn't mean we can't do anything. We should do the good that we can.
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