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 Manchu wrote:
So the government should say "turn over your property for no compensation"?

No, the government should not say that. They should never say 'turn over your property" at all.

And before it gets brought up, I do know what imminent domain laws are and even they are abused. But guns are not real estate anyway.

 CptJake wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
So the government should say "turn over your property for no compensation"?

No, the government should not say that. They should never say 'turn over your property" at all.

And before it gets brought up, I do know what imminent domain laws are and even they are abused. But guns are not real estate anyway.

You're even compensated when emminent domain is invoked.

Confiscatory policies is anathema of our republic.

 CptJake wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
So the government should say "turn over your property for no compensation"?

No, the government should not say that. They should never say 'turn over your property" at all.

And before it gets brought up, I do know what imminent domain laws are and even they are abused. But guns are not real estate anyway.

Agreed all around. I was trying to point out to Spetulhu a critical weakness in his proposal.

Ouze wrote:

Jerram wrote:
The constitution gives the congress the authority the right to raise and support armies, no where does it limit it to draft armies.

Doesn't clause 12 restrict the timeline for said army to two years?

No it restricts appropriations for them to two years (ie funding).

 Grey Templar wrote:
Buy-backs are total jokes.

The only people who will participate in one are already law abiding citizens. The criminals, the ones who you want to take guns away from, will not be turning their guns in for cash.

Oh criminals will turn their guns in at buy backs. Because they get money for disposing of a firearm that was used in crime.

No, they almost always run the serial number on the gun at the end of the day, maybe even run a ballistics test if its the caliber used in a crime.. Your prints are all over a gun that shot someone, that you gave the police for a 40 of beer and some Taco Bell

 Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:
No, they almost always run the serial number on the gun at the end of the day, maybe even run a ballistics test if its the caliber used in a crime.. Your prints are all over a gun that shot someone, that you gave the police for a 40 of beer and some Taco Bell

Buy backs have in the past been done on the understanding that it was cataloged as being used in crime, but not used as evidence. The thinking being that it was better to get the gun off the street

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:
No, they almost always run the serial number on the gun at the end of the day, maybe even run a ballistics test if its the caliber used in a crime.. Your prints are all over a gun that shot someone, that you gave the police for a 40 of beer and some Taco Bell

Buy backs have in the past been done on the understanding that it was cataloged as being used in crime, but not used as evidence. The thinking being that it was better to get the gun off the street

I've had cops tell me they run the serials after a buyback. We had one last year and my neighbor is a county sheriff's deputy. It's amazing what you hear after a few beers.


EDIT: missed out on a few words there.

 Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:
No, they almost always run the serial number on the gun at the end of the day, maybe even run a ballistics test if its the caliber used in a crime.. Your prints are all over a gun that shot someone, that you gave the police for a 40 of beer and some Taco Bell

Buy backs have in the past been done on the understanding that it was cataloged as being used in crime, but not used as evidence. The thinking being that it was better to get the gun off the street

I've had cops tell me they run the serials after a buyback. We had one last year and my neighbor is a county sheriff's deputy. It's amazing what you hear after a few beers.


EDIT: missed out on a few words there.

That's what I meant when I said it was cataloged as being used in crime.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Everyone knows that a rifle or shotgun is a much better weapon than a pistol for defending yourself or attacking other people, unless you want concealment. If you want to avoid being attacked, a concealed weapon is a silly idea anyway, as it can't frighten anyone.

If the popular will existed in the USA to get rid of pistols, it could be done in a few years, with a buy-back. The federal budget last year was over $3 trillion. If you value the pistols at $250 each it will take 27.5 billion dollars to buy them back. That is is under a percent of the annual federal budget. Do it in stages over five years and the cost becomes a rounding error.

However the popular will does not exist.

Yep, it’s the popular will that’s the real issue. Even if you blanched at the cost of buying back all those guns, you could simply ban new sales and watch time quickly reduce the existing stock.

Really, the bigger issue is political will, as you say. Guns are a 30 billion dollar manufacturing industry. No-one is going up against that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 CptJake wrote:
And lets be serious, 'Buy Back' in his context is a polite way of saying confiscation, but with a tiny bit of remittance. It is still done coercively.

Actually there’s constitutional protections that require adequate compensation. And if the Australian experience is a reasonable measure, government would rather hand over too much than chance losing a court case and being made to hand over more money (or worse, see the scheme abandoned).

You’re much more likely to see loads of old & heavily worn, even unusable guns being handed back for full market value than anything else.

 Kilkrazy wrote:


If the popular will existed in the USA to get rid of pistols, it could be done in a few years, with a buy-back. The federal budget last year was over $3 trillion. If you value the pistols at $250 each it will take 27.5 billion dollars to buy them back. That is is under a percent of the annual federal budget. Do it in stages over five years and the cost becomes a rounding error.

Hrm, I dunno if they could get away with a buyback at $250 each. Given that most handguns sell for ~$350+ for compact handguns and $500+ for "duty" handguns, with many popular models going for $700-1200 routinely, $250 is going to feel to most to be a lowball offer.

 sebster wrote:


Yep, it’s the popular will that’s the real issue. Even if you blanched at the cost of buying back all those guns, you could simply ban new sales and watch time quickly reduce the existing stock.

Eh...probably not. You'd drive up prices, but there's a lot of handguns in circulation, about a hundred million. That's a huge quantity. At the same time, guns can last a very long time, especially if they aren't having tons of rounds run through them. There are gobs of first world war weapons out there in functional condition, often having seen more than one conflict, and there are weapons being used in non-insignificant quantities in conflicts today that are 60, 70, 80, 100 years old or more. Be they Stg-44's in Syria, Mosin-Nagant rifles in Ukraine, SMLE's in Afghanistan, PPSh-41's in Iraq, 1950's era AK's in Nigeria, etc. Just perusing online firearms sales sites for a couple minutes, I can find functional handguns of both design and manufacture dating back to the 1890's like Mauser C96's and Nagant revolvers.

If we're talking over a hundred million guns, that existing stock isn't going to disappear quickly. It's going to drive prices up, and you may see some sort of impact from that, but that's probably about it. You'd have to resort to confiscation to lower the number of weapons available in any realistic amount of time.

Really, the bigger issue is political will, as you say. Guns are a 30 billion dollar manufacturing industry. No-one is going up against that.

That number is somewhat misleading, that number reflects the "economic impact" of the industry (which includes taxes, job creation, etc), which can be a somewhat murky number. US civilian firearms sales revenues are about ~$6 billion/year with some fluctuation (with the top 3 producers, Freedom Group/Ruger/Smith & Wesson, netting about 1/6th of that total combined). That's small fry when we're talking industries in the US. Alcholol sales in the US are 35x that, while there are multiple individual tobacco companies who's revenues exceed $30 billion (and a total industry *profit* of more than $35 billion in the US alone), and people are absolutely going up against tobacco.

The size and might of the firearms industry is somewhat overstated, and its supposed economic might is not something that's really a huge factor.

 Vaktathi wrote:
If we're talking over a hundred million guns, that existing stock isn't going to disappear quickly. It's going to drive prices up, and you may see some sort of impact from that, but that's probably about it. You'd have to resort to confiscation to lower the number of weapons available in any realistic amount of time.

You make a fair point, though I’m not sure if the 70 year life of some historic weapons can be used as a real indicator for most pistols. Those are generally kept by enthusiasts, who have the skill and dedication to maintain them, but most of the 100 million pistols out there aren’t held by enthusiasts. How many were purchased for self-defence? How many are owned by people who regularly use them for target shooting and other fun, but who lack the skill of an historic collector?

I think your point is right that the decline in weapons will be a long one (and I suspect many owners will start learning better maintenance skills, or firing their pistols less often once they know a replacement can’t be bought). I was thinking it would be ten or more years before a material decline was seen.

As you rightly say, the first and most significant impact will be in price.

The size and might of the firearms industry is somewhat overstated, and its supposed economic might is not something that's really a huge factor.

Being 1/35 of the scale of alcohol does not make you small. It makes you a smaller giant.

Ouze wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
A pacifist clause could have had a major impact on US history, especially with conscription in wartime.

Yeah, I suspect a lot of the people who argue that we need to go with a strict, literal reading of the constitution, and eliminate everything not specifically provided for (meaning the EPA, and the Department of Education) don't realize under this theory, the Army would also need to disbanded. I think the founding father were pretty clear on how bad an idea they thought standing armies were, and by the fact they explicitly called for the creation of a Post Office and left nothing whatsoever for a standing army.

Of course, in 2015 that's no longer a good idea. Conscript armies thrown together on the fly haven't been unworkable in forever. It's almost like the founding fathers knew they they needed to have a flexible document that allowed for societal evolution.

I remember one guy here in the OT (who didn't last very long) that went on and on about how we need a strong standing army based here in the United States to secure our borders from external threats while at the same time claiming to be a "devout Jeffersonian."

It was all good fun.

 sebster wrote:
You make a fair point, though I’m not sure if the 70 year life of some historic weapons can be used as a real indicator for most pistols. Those are generally kept by enthusiasts, who have the skill and dedication to maintain them, but most of the 100 million pistols out there aren’t held by enthusiasts. How many were purchased for self-defence? How many are owned by people who regularly use them for target shooting and other fun, but who lack the skill of an historic collector?

I'd expect modern pistols to last longer, on average, than their septuagenarian counterparts, and modern pistols are drastically less maintenance-intensive than your 1911. Everything on today's polymer guns is interchangeable and pretty easy to do drop-in replacements with, and parts are cheap.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:


If the popular will existed in the USA to get rid of pistols, it could be done in a few years, with a buy-back. The federal budget last year was over $3 trillion. If you value the pistols at $250 each it will take 27.5 billion dollars to buy them back. That is is under a percent of the annual federal budget. Do it in stages over five years and the cost becomes a rounding error.

Hrm, I dunno if they could get away with a buyback at $250 each. Given that most handguns sell for ~$350+ for compact handguns and $500+ for "duty" handguns, with many popular models going for $700-1200 routinely, $250 is going to feel to most to be a lowball offer.

...

So offer $500 per gun, or if you like, do a graded offer ranging from $100 to $1,00 depending on the model of gun and accessories. The basic point is that getting rid of pistols would not collapse the US economy, if you wanted to do it.

 sebster wrote:


You make a fair point, though I’m not sure if the 70 year life of some historic weapons can be used as a real indicator for most pistols. Those are generally kept by enthusiasts, who have the skill and dedication to maintain them but most of the 100 million pistols out there aren’t held by enthusiasts. How many were purchased for self-defence? How many are owned by people who regularly use them for target shooting and other fun, but who lack the skill of an historic collector?

Your average historical collector is not a qualified gunsmith, and, unless we're talking relatively high end pieces, most weapons probably aren't treated much differently from those kept in practical use. By the same token, most people don't treat their weapons like garbage either, especially if they're self defense weapons. Many handguns will function flawlessly without cleaning for far more rounds than their owners will ever put through them. If weapons are simply properly cleaned or even minimally taken care of they'll outlast their owners unless their owners are putting many thousands of dollars worth of ammo through them.

Various modern handguns have been subjected to testing of over 250,000 rounds (~$50k of ammo if you're using super cheap stuff) with infrequent cleaning and still function. They last a really long time



I'm sure we'd see some sort of effect at some point, but it'd take decades to really see some sort of major effect, and a lifetime to probably see any noticeable number of guns removed from circulation, more probably you'd see more guns in the hands of fewer people trading at higher prices would be my guess over time.

Being 1/35 of the scale of alcohol does not make you small. It makes you a smaller giant.

Hrm, I won't say they're a cottage industry, but they're hardly an economic giant. They're not big enough to bring anything near the pressure to bear that many think it can.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:


If the popular will existed in the USA to get rid of pistols, it could be done in a few years, with a buy-back. The federal budget last year was over $3 trillion. If you value the pistols at $250 each it will take 27.5 billion dollars to buy them back. That is is under a percent of the annual federal budget. Do it in stages over five years and the cost becomes a rounding error.

Hrm, I dunno if they could get away with a buyback at $250 each. Given that most handguns sell for ~$350+ for compact handguns and $500+ for "duty" handguns, with many popular models going for $700-1200 routinely, $250 is going to feel to most to be a lowball offer.

...

So offer $500 per gun, or if you like, do a graded offer ranging from $100 to $1,00 depending on the model of gun and accessories. The basic point is that getting rid of pistols would not collapse the US economy, if you wanted to do it.

Yes, I agree, the monetary cost isn't insurmountable if the will were there.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:


If the popular will existed in the USA to get rid of pistols, it could be done in a few years, with a buy-back. The federal budget last year was over $3 trillion. If you value the pistols at $250 each it will take 27.5 billion dollars to buy them back. That is is under a percent of the annual federal budget. Do it in stages over five years and the cost becomes a rounding error.

Hrm, I dunno if they could get away with a buyback at $250 each. Given that most handguns sell for ~$350+ for compact handguns and $500+ for "duty" handguns, with many popular models going for $700-1200 routinely, $250 is going to feel to most to be a lowball offer.

...

So offer $500 per gun, or if you like, do a graded offer ranging from $100 to $1,00 depending on the model of gun and accessories. The basic point is that getting rid of pistols would not collapse the US economy, if you wanted to do it.

It would when lots of those pistols start being used on the people trying to take them.

Seaward wrote:
I'd expect modern pistols to last longer, on average, than their septuagenarian counterparts, and modern pistols are drastically less maintenance-intensive than your 1911. Everything on today's polymer guns is interchangeable and pretty easy to do drop-in replacements with, and parts are cheap.

That's interesting, thanks. It makes sense to hear that guns are lower maintenance these days, though I'd never thought of it.

Seaward wrote:

I'd expect modern pistols to last longer, on average, than their septuagenarian counterparts, and modern pistols are drastically less maintenance-intensive than your 1911. Everything on today's polymer guns is interchangeable and pretty easy to do drop-in replacements with, and parts are cheap.

I think that depends on the type of gun. You have to consider how many moving parts the gun has.

A revolver will last way longer than a semi-automatic for the same reason they almost never jam. Less parts means less things to go wrong. And you become reliant on those replacement parts too.

And any gun that's stored in a reasonably dry place would be perfectly usable for an almost indefinite amount of time, at most it might need a tiny bit of cleaning. Same with ammo.

Unless a gun is horribly abused, like letting it rust over, its not going to become unusable just with time.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Various modern handguns have been subjected to testing of over 250,000 rounds (~$50k of ammo if you're using super cheap stuff) with infrequent cleaning and still function. They last a really long time

Fair enough then. Thanks for taking the time to explaining this.

I'm sure we'd see some sort of effect at some point, but it'd take decades to really see some sort of major effect, and a lifetime to probably see any noticeable number of guns removed from circulation, more probably you'd see more guns in the hands of fewer people trading at higher prices would be my guess over time.

The other factor I just thought of is if this law gets talked about, you'd see a massive spike in gun sales before it is passed. So you'd get a massive spike in the number of pistols out there. That, combined with the much longer life expectancy of a pistol than I realised means banning new sales will probably solve nothing, and may actually the problem worse in the short to (possibly) medium term.

The price would possibly be a controlling factor, but how much I don't know. And without the stock of guns declining that fast, the price wouldn't keep growing, meaning that impact wouldn't be that great either.

Hrm, I won't say they're a cottage industry, but they're hardly an economic giant. They're not big enough to bring anything near the pressure to bear that many think it can.

Sure. I've always belonged to the group that suspects their assumed voting power is much less than presumed, but still, it's a big enough industry to be really tough to take on. You mentioned tobacco earlier as something people aren't afraid to take on, but tobacco is actually the classic example of how hard it is to take on an industry. I mean that's a product that doesn't give the power to do harm, it straight up kills people through it's regular, expected use. And despite that regulation against the industry is almost designed to do nothing to actually hurt industry profits.

Fun story - if you time travelled back to 1960 and told you could pick one single product to put all your money in, the best pick by a very long way, based on the dividends you would be paid and the capital growth you'd receive from then until now... tobacco.

Seaward wrote:
I'd expect modern pistols to last longer, on average, than their septuagenarian counterparts, and modern pistols are drastically less maintenance-intensive than your 1911. Everything on today's polymer guns is interchangeable and pretty easy to do drop-in replacements with, and parts are cheap.

That will depend on the pistol and the owner, I guess. Something nice from a high-end manufacturer? Sure, it's going to be well-made and the owner will clean and take care of it. But those el-cheapo 120$ pistols that end up with criminals are likely to be crappily built, ill maintained and probably less reliable than a 70-year old Hi-Power straight out of the box.

 sebster wrote:

The other factor I just thought of is if this law gets talked about, you'd see a massive spike in gun sales before it is passed. So you'd get a massive spike in the number of pistols out there. That, combined with the much longer life expectancy of a pistol than I realised means banning new sales will probably solve nothing, and may actually the problem worse in the short to (possibly) medium term.

That would seem to be the track record we've seen with things like "assault weapons" bans.

Sure. I've always belonged to the group that suspects their assumed voting power is much less than presumed, but still, it's a big enough industry to be really tough to take on. You mentioned tobacco earlier as something people aren't afraid to take on, but tobacco is actually the classic example of how hard it is to take on an industry. I mean that's a product that doesn't give the power to do harm, it straight up kills people through it's regular, expected use. And despite that regulation against the industry is almost designed to do nothing to actually hurt industry profits.

Fun story - if you time travelled back to 1960 and told you could pick one single product to put all your money in, the best pick by a very long way, based on the dividends you would be paid and the capital growth you'd receive from then until now... tobacco.

That's not a bad point, though to be fair, i don't think regulation is really intended to harm tobacco industry profits, but rather mitigate the negative effects of the product, and tobacco profits are what they are despite dramatic declines in the number of smokers as a percentage of the population.

Spetulhu wrote:

Seaward wrote:
I'd expect modern pistols to last longer, on average, than their septuagenarian counterparts, and modern pistols are drastically less maintenance-intensive than your 1911. Everything on today's polymer guns is interchangeable and pretty easy to do drop-in replacements with, and parts are cheap.

That will depend on the pistol and the owner, I guess. Something nice from a high-end manufacturer? Sure, it's going to be well-made and the owner will clean and take care of it. But those el-cheapo 120$ pistols that end up with criminals are likely to be crappily built, ill maintained and probably less reliable than a 70-year old Hi-Power straight out of the box.

There aren't very many of those anymore, the "saturday night specials" are long gone by and large, the closest you'll get is something like a $200 High Point 9mm (yes, different from a Hi-Power), and even one of those will last a decent amount of time and few thousand rounds.

The reason why tobacco industry profits have held up is simply because sales have increased massively outside the western world, compensating for the reduction in smoking in the west.

To be fair to western governments, it isn't their job to tell places like Mali and China what to do with their public health.

 Vaktathi wrote:
That's not a bad point, though to be fair, i don't think regulation is really intended to harm tobacco industry profits, but rather mitigate the negative effects of the product, and tobacco profits are what they are despite dramatic declines in the number of smokers as a percentage of the population.

Yeah, but the issue isn't just that they aren't trying to harm industry profits, they're actually doing what they can to minimise smoking while trying to impact smoking profits as little as possible. So when you see any kind of anti-smoking regulation start up, cigarette companies will start up with rhetoric about killing the industry and lots of job losses, and then the new laws will be pared back or abandoned.

There aren't very many of those anymore, the "saturday night specials" are long gone by and large, the closest you'll get is something like a $200 High Point 9mm (yes, different from a Hi-Power), and even one of those will last a decent amount of time and few thousand rounds.

Interesting. Do you know what drove the change? Did some form of regulation make the cheaper weapons unavailable or simply not worth it, or was it some kind of natural market change, like a more discerning consumer?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The reason why tobacco industry profits have held up is simply because sales have increased massively outside the western world, compensating for the reduction in smoking in the west.

Smoking in the US is in decline, but the decline more or less plateaued, and the overall decline was nothing like what was expected. When the link to cancer was becoming undeniable, people talked about tobacco having one last generation to sell its product to.

That's why smoking turned out to be such a great return, shares in the industry were massively discounted because people thought they had one generation of sales left, but regulation never came down as hard a people thought it was going to, and no-one realised that teenagers were stupid enough to start smoking.

To continue the smoking tangent, legislation is still being produced on smoking. The latest proposal in the UK is to ban smoking in public open spaces like streets and parks.

Lots of people are switching to e-cigs, prompting calls for legislation on vaping. Some buildings have already introduced bans on vaping that mirror the legal bans on 'real' smoking.

Spetulhu wrote:

Seaward wrote:
I'd expect modern pistols to last longer, on average, than their septuagenarian counterparts, and modern pistols are drastically less maintenance-intensive than your 1911. Everything on today's polymer guns is interchangeable and pretty easy to do drop-in replacements with, and parts are cheap.

That will depend on the pistol and the owner, I guess. Something nice from a high-end manufacturer? Sure, it's going to be well-made and the owner will clean and take care of it. But those el-cheapo 120$ pistols that end up with criminals are likely to be crappily built, ill maintained and probably less reliable than a 70-year old Hi-Power straight out of the box.

I wouldn't expect something from Jimenez Arms to hold up for seventy years, but your average, run-of-the-mill, ridiculously popular and prolific $500 Glock 19? Absolutely, unless you're putting thousands of rounds through it. Parts will break, but those parts are exceptionally easy to replace, because there is no shortage and won't be for decades to come.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
To continue the smoking tangent, legislation is still being produced on smoking. The latest proposal in the UK is to ban smoking in public open spaces like streets and parks.

Lots of people are switching to e-cigs, prompting calls for legislation on vaping. Some buildings have already introduced bans on vaping that mirror the legal bans on 'real' smoking.

I find bans on smoking in public spaces (streets and parks) utterly ridiculous... the "science" doesn't really hold up. I read one article from a group of unaffiliated scientists (as in, they weren't paid by tobacco, or the anti-tobacco groups) that, in their study they found that the effects of 2nd hand smoke is non-existent beyond a 6 ft. radius from the smoker.



Also, with the e-cig thing... as ridiculous of a notion as I find the whole thing, I do kind of agree with places that have banned tobacco products in their places. IMO, it's less a "this is a new technology and we're afraid of it, so ban it" thing, and more of a "no tobacco means no tobacco. Period" thing. I know the school I just left had this policy, and the school I'm going to has a policy even more draconian (the one I left had a designated smoking area. The school I'm moving to has no smoking area, and is designated a "tobacco free campus" so if you do any of that stuff you're SOL)

I also think the public smoking bans are a little ridiculous especially when predicated upon "secondary smoke".

If you ban it on the basis of the toxic litter it tends to generate in public spaces, that's a little bit better, but still fairly lame. Littering has better remedies (ticketing, available waste receptacles) , and we don't ban other items just because they are common sources of litter.

TBH, I'm OK with the bans just because I hate the smell of smoke.

I went to an smoking casino recently, and we had to leave pretty soon. It was super hard to breathe in there even as a former smoker. It can be pretty overpowering in confined areas.