Is fear of confiscation valid?
- Thread starter Koda94
- Start date
Aguila Blanca
Staff
It's insidious. I stopped by a small, local gunshop this afternoon. One of the proprietors was discussing Connecticut with a customer (whom I had not seen in there before -- usually Saturday afternoon brings in a cadre of "usual suspects").
The short story is that the proprietor has a friend who is an FFL in Connecticut. When CT enacted its recent registration scheme and "large capacity" magazine ban, the CT FFL called the State Police to ask what gunshops were supposed to do with existing stocks of "large capacity" magazines. The State Police (reportedly) told him to either register them (all!) or take/send them out of state and sell them outside of Connecticut.
To my mind, that's akin to a subtle mode of confiscation. Effectively, what difference does it make if the state takes them away from you or if the state makes you dispose of them yourself? The result is the same -- you no longer have what you used to have.
The short story is that the proprietor has a friend who is an FFL in Connecticut. When CT enacted its recent registration scheme and "large capacity" magazine ban, the CT FFL called the State Police to ask what gunshops were supposed to do with existing stocks of "large capacity" magazines. The State Police (reportedly) told him to either register them (all!) or take/send them out of state and sell them outside of Connecticut.
To my mind, that's akin to a subtle mode of confiscation. Effectively, what difference does it make if the state takes them away from you or if the state makes you dispose of them yourself? The result is the same -- you no longer have what you used to have.
Dragonflydf
New member
It has all ready happened, remember the legal owners of SKS rifles in California were required to register them, then a few years later were ordered to turn them in, as they were now illegal and they knew who had them.
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So this is all very interesting stuff. Very chilling and unsettling and now I'm all bothered and upset. Anyhow my question here is what would you honest men do in this situation? All BS aside do you give in and be a good boy or do you resist and risk being a felon and losing the rest of your rights? I just can't see myself tossing ANY of my posessions into a pile because the government is tired of me having them????????!!!!!!
buck460XVR
New member
I tend to disagree. I truly believe it will take house by house searches for Americans to give up their guns. Any registration done now would only give owners information on new guns bought from FFLs that have to be registered when sold and those very few guns that honest folks might actually register. Those would leave multiple millions of firearms in multiple millions of homes that would not be registered.....and this is just those owned by otherwise law abiding citizens. Waiting for an ex-wife or the nosy neighbor to turn in unregistered guns one or two at a time would take till the sun burns itself out before they were accounted for. Going house to house is not that big a deal, nor would it take much energy. My state mandates that every house/residence in the state is inspected and appraised every coupla years. This get done in a matter of just a few months. Searching for firearms and ammo with powder sniffing dogs and metal detectors would take no more time or effort and would result in the finding of a high percentage of firearms if the searches were random and surprised.
But it ain't gonna happen. Look at the statistics. Too many folks with firearms and too many folks that support that which protects our right to own them. The reason our forefathers gave us the Second amendment in the first place was to prevent this very thing. There would have to be one 'ell of a lot of other major changes in the way of life we know in the U.S. before they come and take our guns.
Second, folks assume that confiscation will involve systematic house-by-house searches.
This happened in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Then police chief Eddie Compass said flat out that only law enforcement would be allowed to have guns. Police went door to door and confiscated guns. That was in a pro-gun state, though New Orleans is its own little world.
This happened in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Then police chief Eddie Compass said flat out that only law enforcement would be allowed to have guns. Police went door to door and confiscated guns. That was in a pro-gun state, though New Orleans is its own little world.
You're taking a short term view of the situation. There's no hurry from their perspective. Making it virtually impossible for owners to use them or transfer them is an acceptable first step as far as they're concerned. From there it's just a matter of time and they're willing to wait. At least they have been willing to wait every where else it's happened.
Well, police and National Guard troops. It can happen, but the circumstances were pretty unusual and the area involved was pretty small, all things considered.
By the way, I'm not sure my point is coming across accurately.
I don't mean for people to think that they don't need to worry about anti-gun laws. They DO need to worry. The fact that there almost certainly won't be house-to-house searches and a strategy of immediate doorstep confiscation doesn't mean that rights will be retained. The guns and the rights will be lost just as certainly--just not as quickly.
The fear that "they are trying to take our guns" is certainly a valid fear. It's just that it's much more likely that "they" will take our guns via a gradual erosion of rights vs. going down the street searching each house for guns.
I wish I shared your optimism. The Senate vote on last year's Manchin-Toomey bill was 54-46, with the majority for it. Sure, plenty of people ran out and bought guns, but how many bothered to take the time to contact their elected officials about the issue?
The answer is pitifully few. Gun owners aren't more politically active than the general public, and most can't even be counted to vote at all. The fact that there are lots of folks with guns doesn't mean there are a lot of folks inclined to get involved.
If I had a dime for every gun owner who told me they weren't worried about "background checks," or a blanket ban on "assault weapons," I'd be retired by now.
JT-AR-MG42
New member
In agreement with much of JohnKSa's post.
Attrition is the way for them.
Anti-gun forces know that every restrictive local law (like a common sense one concerning the judgement of a person with a past DUI on their record)
tightens the noose on the rights of future generations.
If you think of all gun owners in a circle holding hands.
Every new law, many with retro-active consequences, causes some in the circle to have drop out and never be allowed to return.
As far as house-to-house?
Not practical and very dangerous for all concerned.
By then, the battle for our rights would be over.
Enough tragic examples with entire families and a few innocents thrown in will be made so that there will be no need for them to raid everybody.
Most gun owners care more about their families than keeping guns that would be illegal to use anyway.
The authorities will simply shut off or jam all forms of power, phone, and water service
to the neighborhood block where the targeted gun owner who refuses to cooperate resides.
They'll let your neighbors talk you into surrendering the firearms.
JT
Attrition is the way for them.
Anti-gun forces know that every restrictive local law (like a common sense one concerning the judgement of a person with a past DUI on their record)
tightens the noose on the rights of future generations.
If you think of all gun owners in a circle holding hands.
Every new law, many with retro-active consequences, causes some in the circle to have drop out and never be allowed to return.
As far as house-to-house?
Not practical and very dangerous for all concerned.
By then, the battle for our rights would be over.
Enough tragic examples with entire families and a few innocents thrown in will be made so that there will be no need for them to raid everybody.
Most gun owners care more about their families than keeping guns that would be illegal to use anyway.
The authorities will simply shut off or jam all forms of power, phone, and water service
to the neighborhood block where the targeted gun owner who refuses to cooperate resides.
They'll let your neighbors talk you into surrendering the firearms.
JT
jt-ar-mg42 said:
Now that would be the one SURE way to make Americans revolt against whatever regime tried to implement it.
The vast majority of Americans are apathetic to whether anyone owns guns or not. Inconveniencing the common citizen's cable TV, cell phone, facebook, etc, over something that makes no difference to them would be the surest way possible to get elected officials that would end the practice.
Aguila Blanca
Staff
Considering that the .gov just enacted a law allowing the .gov to collect all sorts of info about us "honest men" that they were previously prohibited from collecting (and which they collected anyway ... I'm talkin' about you, NSA), I think it would be very foolish of anyone to answer your question in any way other than, "I would comply with the law, of course."mattL46 said:
If the police come knocking on my door for my guns they would have a firefight on their hands. I would rather risk my life defending my freedoms than give them up and suffer the consequences. Some may agree some may disagree. I personally believe in us (american citizens). I think now we have more shooters and gun owners than ever. Most semi intelligent adults understand that our guns Guaruntee the rest of our freedoms. Without them we will end up like dictatorship china. It is hard to overthrow the people when they are armed and dangerous. Don't pick a fight with us, Feds!
Evan Thomas
Inactive
Let's NOT, in this thread, go down the "armed revolution" path. Good way to get it closed -- that's not our mission here.
To follow up on what Tom said -- it's easy to posture about resisting the Govt., but it rings very hollow when it comes from people who aren't, right now, involved in the political process.
I. an see where that makes sense. I just disagree with hiding in fear of your government. I could very well be wrong with my opinion and some will agree some won't but it will be a bad day for me and many others if anything on the scale of whats being discussed here actually unfolds in all realism. And i mean more than the SKS incident. Firearms in all physicalities But i get what youre saying. The less noticeable you are the less noticed youll be. Edited to say in conjunction with what Vanya requested that's the last you'll hear from me. Apologies for starting it.
mikejonestkd
New member
The NYS SAFE act allows for confiscation of firearms by the police for a variety of reasons. We already have lived for years under possible confiscation of handguns if our permits are revoked for any reason, now we could lose all firearms...
Yes, confiscation is real.
Yes, confiscation is real.
Spats McGee
Administrator
Going back to the OP:
Hmm . . . . . Section 472(b)(1)(A)(iii) says that we have to destroy the records. That's OK. By my reading of the rest of the section, "record" just means the original 4473 that Mr. McGee filled out on that pistol. It doesn't say that we can't transcribe the information first . . .
The second question is how the gov't would go about confiscation. I do think house-to-house searches are possible, but unlikely. House-to-house searches are dangerous and expensive and have the potential to be high-publicity. Simple attrition, on the other hand, happens a little at a time, is somewhat less likely to attract attention, and could be done in a much less risky fashion (a gun owner in his car is not all that likely to have his entire collection with him). All of those work in favor of the anti-gun factions. Got a taillight out? That leads to a traffic stop. From that point, there are all kinds of ways that the police can legally search your car: consent, drug dog alert, inventory search if they impound the car . . . (A buddy of mine is fond of saying that "the automobile is the worst thing that's ever happened to the Fourth Amendment.").
A final thought: Even if confiscation is unlikely at this juncture, it may not always be. If we give in a little here and a little there, future generations may not recognize what they've lost. It's the "boiling the frog" theory. I'm middle-aged (45), and in my entire gun-buying history: (1) I've never been able to have a gun mailed from out-of-state to my doorstep; (2) I've always had to have a background check if I purchased at an FFL; and (3) Machine guns have never been available to the general public. Had I been born a century earlier, I'd have been able to order a machine gun out of a catalog and have it delivered to my doorstep, no FFL needed. All of that seems very normal to me, but it doesn't mean that my "gun-buying forefathers" didn't lose some 2A rights along the way. Fifteen years ago, I'm not sure I recognized that.
Yes, it is. The first question that I see is whether the feds are destroying the records. I'd be exceptionally surprised if they were. What's more, if I were a federal lawyer working for the BATFE, I'd be looking at the exact language of the statutes and rules in question:Koda94 said:
Hmm . . . . . Section 472(b)(1)(A)(iii) says that we have to destroy the records. That's OK. By my reading of the rest of the section, "record" just means the original 4473 that Mr. McGee filled out on that pistol. It doesn't say that we can't transcribe the information first . . .
The second question is how the gov't would go about confiscation. I do think house-to-house searches are possible, but unlikely. House-to-house searches are dangerous and expensive and have the potential to be high-publicity. Simple attrition, on the other hand, happens a little at a time, is somewhat less likely to attract attention, and could be done in a much less risky fashion (a gun owner in his car is not all that likely to have his entire collection with him). All of those work in favor of the anti-gun factions. Got a taillight out? That leads to a traffic stop. From that point, there are all kinds of ways that the police can legally search your car: consent, drug dog alert, inventory search if they impound the car . . . (A buddy of mine is fond of saying that "the automobile is the worst thing that's ever happened to the Fourth Amendment.").
A final thought: Even if confiscation is unlikely at this juncture, it may not always be. If we give in a little here and a little there, future generations may not recognize what they've lost. It's the "boiling the frog" theory. I'm middle-aged (45), and in my entire gun-buying history: (1) I've never been able to have a gun mailed from out-of-state to my doorstep; (2) I've always had to have a background check if I purchased at an FFL; and (3) Machine guns have never been available to the general public. Had I been born a century earlier, I'd have been able to order a machine gun out of a catalog and have it delivered to my doorstep, no FFL needed. All of that seems very normal to me, but it doesn't mean that my "gun-buying forefathers" didn't lose some 2A rights along the way. Fifteen years ago, I'm not sure I recognized that.
To follow up on this, the Supreme Court's rulings have been narrowly focused on a specific issue: the right of the individual to register a handgun to keep in the home. Full stop.
They have not ruled against bans on certain weapons. They have not ruled against registration (quite the opposite, really). They have not ruled on confiscation during "emergencies."
buck460XVR
New member
...and this takes less time and effort than searching the home or arresting the "targeted gun owner"? What happens when it's like my neighborhood and every one for several blocks around me have guns that they would not give up without a fight? My neighbors would not give me up, but rally around me and expect me to the same.
As for the "not being able to use them". Hunting is not only ingrained in this country and the rest of the world as a form of recreation, but as the most effective way to regulate animal numbers. Concealed carry has finally been legalized in every state in the Union. Thinking that the same government that is giving us these rights today, is going take all of them away tomorrow with a total confiscation of all firearms is paranoia. The chipping away of our rights has been slowed and put in reverse. The majority of sentiment towards firearms in this country has been shown to be positive lately as folks that were once apathetic towards gun ownership are now endorsing it because of fear of loosing that right.
As I said before, before we see the complete confiscation of firearms by Hyperarchy, we will suffer many other types of major changes in our lifestyle. Odds are none of us will be here on the internet whining about the government without fear of loosing our heads or endangering the lives of our loved ones. We will be more worried about feeding and giving shelter to our families than how many rounds we are allowed to have in our magazines. Trying to stay warm in the winter and keeping our children healthy will take priority over whether we have to fill out a form 4473 at a gunshow. It will take a major change in our form of government before our Constitution takes our guns away.