We've been hearing for years that certain elements want to end firearm ownership, even claiming that some of them will confiscate everyone's guns. Let's look at that rationally for a moment.

There are over 300,000,000 people in this country, there are 10's, perhaps 100's, of billions of potential hiding spots. Law enforcement cannot find illegal firearms, or prevent those who cannot legally posses firearms from...................possessing firearms illegally.

With that in mind, what rational thinker would believe that any level or branch of government, could actually confiscate ANYONE's guns? Law enforcement would have to search every home, shed, barn, office, boat, aircraft, storage unit, cabin, lodge, and every other structure where firearms could be hidden. In addition, they'd have to deploy ground penetrating radar, examining every inch of ground in the country. To even come close to this, there would need to be one searcher for every gun owner, placing every suspected gun owner under 24/7 surveillance, to prevent them from moving their weapons around.

Should the Federal government, by some stretch of the imagination, pass a law barring citizens from possessing firearms......... many States would refuse to enforce it and most law enforcement officers and military personnel would look the other way.

The long and short of it is; any suggestion that guns are going to be taken away from anyone, by anyone, is laughable in the extreme. Those who suggest such a thing are trying to use "the fear factor", to gain attention, money, power, or more likely..................all three.

Try to think rationally, don't fall for the ridiculous conspiracies.

We've been hearing for years that certain elements want to end firearm ownership, even claiming that some of them will confiscate everyone's guns. Let's look at that rationally for a moment.

There are over 300,000,000 people in this country, there are 10's, perhaps 100's, of billions of potential hiding spots. Law enforcement cannot find illegal firearms, or prevent those who cannot legally posses firearms from...................possessing firearms illegally.

With that in mind, what rational thinker would believe that any level or branch of government, could actually confiscate ANYONE's guns? Law enforcement would have to search every home, shed, barn, office, boat, aircraft, storage unit, cabin, lodge, and every other structure where firearms could be hidden. In addition, they'd have to deploy ground penetrating radar, examining every inch of ground in the country. To even come close to this, there would need to be one searcher for every gun owner, placing every suspected gun owner under 24/7 surveillance, to prevent them from moving their weapons around.

Should the Federal government, by some stretch of the imagination, pass a law barring citizens from possessing firearms......... many States would refuse to enforce it and most law enforcement officers and military personnel would look the other way.

The long and short of it is; any suggestion that guns are going to be taken away from anyone, by anyone, is laughable in the extreme. Those who suggest such a thing are trying to use "the fear factor", to gain attention, money, power, or more likely..................all three.

Try to think rationally, don't fall for the ridiculous conspiracies.

In many States today, you can't make a purchase at s gun shop, not even a rifle or shotgun, without showing ID and having the sale recorded.

During Katrina, the NOPD went door-to-door of recorded firearms purchasers and confiscated their firearms -- some are even today having to go through attorneys to try to get them back.

Therefore, the only "safe" way to own a firearm in many States is to own them illegally.

In that way, unless you are in law enforcement or specifically have a permit to carry, you have to be a "criminal" to own a firearm that isn't vulnerable to potential confiscation.

We've been hearing for years that certain elements want to end firearm ownership, even claiming that some of them will confiscate everyone's guns. Let's look at that rationally for a moment.

There are over 300,000,000 people in this country, there are 10's, perhaps 100's, of billions of potential hiding spots. Law enforcement cannot find illegal firearms, or prevent those who cannot legally posses firearms from...................possessing firearms illegally.

With that in mind, what rational thinker would believe that any level or branch of government, could actually confiscate ANYONE's guns? Law enforcement would have to search every home, shed, barn, office, boat, aircraft, storage unit, cabin, lodge, and every other structure where firearms could be hidden. In addition, they'd have to deploy ground penetrating radar, examining every inch of ground in the country. To even come close to this, there would need to be one searcher for every gun owner, placing every suspected gun owner under 24/7 surveillance, to prevent them from moving their weapons around.

Should the Federal government, by some stretch of the imagination, pass a law barring citizens from possessing firearms......... many States would refuse to enforce it and most law enforcement officers and military personnel would look the other way.

The long and short of it is; any suggestion that guns are going to be taken away from anyone, by anyone, is laughable in the extreme. Those who suggest such a thing are trying to use "the fear factor", to gain attention, money, power, or more likely..................all three.

Try to think rationally, don't fall for the ridiculous conspiracies.

OPINION
Flashback: Ban assault weapons, buy them back, go after resisters: Eric Swalwell

Eric Swalwell Published 3:15 a.m. ET May 3, 2018 | Updated 9:33 p.m. ET April 8, 2019

Ban assault weapons and buy them back. It might cost $15 billion, but we can afford it. Consider it an investment in our most important right, the right to live.

Editor's note: This column was originally published on May 3, 2018.

Gary Jackson never stood a chance.

Gary was 28 and working as a security guard at a taco truck in Oakland, Calif., in 2009 when he saw Dreshawn Lee carrying a sawed-off shotgun and reported it to police. Three months later, Lee took his revenge by shooting and killing Jackson with an AK-47-style semiautomatic assault rifle.

I was the prosecutor who persuaded a jury to convict Lee and persuaded a judge to put him away for 65 years to life. But Gary’s autopsy report still haunts me.

Trauma surgeons and coroners will tell you the high-velocity bullet fired from a military-style, semiautomatic assault weapon moves almost three times as fast as a 9mm handgun bullet, delivering far more energy. The bullets create cavities through the victim, wrecking a wider swath of tissue, organs and blood vessels. And a low-recoil weapon with a higher-capacity magazine means more of these deadlier bullets can be fired accurately and quickly without reloading.


An assault weapon, then, is a hand-held weapon of war, capable of spraying a crowd with more lethal fire in seconds.

So Gary didn’t stand much chance. First-graders and teachers in Newtown, Conn., didn’t either. Nor did dancers at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, nor concert-goers in Las Vegas, nor teenagers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Fla., nor the people at the Waffle House outside Nashville. Like so many American mass-shooting victims in recent decades, their doom was all but assured by the murderer’s tool.


Nonetheless, we can give ourselves and our children the chance these victims never had. We can finally act to remove weapons designed for war from our streets, once and for all.

Reinstating the federal assault weapons ban that was in effect from 1994 to 2004 would prohibit manufacture and sales, but it would not affect weapons already possessed. This would leave millions of assault weapons in our communities for decades to come.

Instead, we should ban possession of military-style semiautomatic assault weapons, we should buy back such weapons from all who choose to abide by the law, and we should criminally prosecute any who choose to defy it by keeping their weapons. The ban would not apply to law enforcement agencies or shooting clubs.

There's something new and different about the surviving Parkland high schoolers’ demands. They dismiss the moral equivalence we’ve made for far too long regarding the Second Amendment. I've been guilty of it myself, telling constituents and reporters that “we can protect the Second Amendment and protect lives.”

The Parkland teens have taught us there is no right more important than every student’s right to come home after class. The right to live is supreme over any other.

Our courts haven’t found a constitutional right to have assault weapons, anyway. When the Supreme Court held in 2008 that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that this right “is not unlimited” and is “not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”

Since that District of Columbia v. Heller decision, four federal appeals courts have upheld assault weapons bans. Many other firearms are available for self-protection, they found, and the danger that assault weapons pose to society is a legitimate reason for states and localities to ban them.

Australia got it right. After a man used military-style weapons to kill 35 people in April 1996, that nation adopted strict new measures and bought back 643,726 newly illegal rifles and shotguns at market value. The cost — an estimated $230 million in U.S. dollars at the time — was funded by a temporary 0.2% tax levy on national health insurance.

America won’t get off that cheaply. Gun ownership runs so deep that we don’t even know how many military-style semiautomatic rifles are in U.S. civilian hands.

Based on manufacturing figures and other indirect data, there could be 15 million assault weapons out there. If we offer $200 to buy back each weapon — as many local governments have — then it would cost about $3 billion; at $1,000 each, the cost would be about $15 billion.

It’s no small sum. But let’s put it in context.

The federal government is spending an estimated $4 trillion this year; $15 billion would be 0.375% of that, not that we must spend it all in one year.

Meanwhile, the GOP’s tax “reform” — a giveaway to corporations and the rich that threw comparatively meager scraps to working families — is projected to increase the national debt by $1.9 trillion over the next decade.

What is it worth to American taxpayers to not see our families, friends and neighbors cut down in a hail of gunfire? Consider this an investment in averting carnage and heartache and loss.

When I think of Jackson, I think of all the others who died with wounds like his. I think about my dad and two brothers who put their lives on the line as law enforcement officers. I think about my 11-month-old son, Nelson, and the safe classrooms I want him to learn in.

America has a deadly problem, a problem other developed nations have avoided or addressed. Some say we’re already too far gone to take corrective action, but we cannot have a defeatist attitude about this. Fixing our problem requires boldness and will be costly, but the cost of letting it fester will be far higher — for our wallets, and for our souls.

We've been hearing for years that certain elements want to end firearm ownership, even claiming that some of them will confiscate everyone's guns. Let's look at that rationally for a moment.

There are over 300,000,000 people in this country, there are 10's, perhaps 100's, of billions of potential hiding spots. Law enforcement cannot find illegal firearms, or prevent those who cannot legally posses firearms from...................possessing firearms illegally.

With that in mind, what rational thinker would believe that any level or branch of government, could actually confiscate ANYONE's guns? Law enforcement would have to search every home, shed, barn, office, boat, aircraft, storage unit, cabin, lodge, and every other structure where firearms could be hidden. In addition, they'd have to deploy ground penetrating radar, examining every inch of ground in the country. To even come close to this, there would need to be one searcher for every gun owner, placing every suspected gun owner under 24/7 surveillance, to prevent them from moving their weapons around.

Should the Federal government, by some stretch of the imagination, pass a law barring citizens from possessing firearms......... many States would refuse to enforce it and most law enforcement officers and military personnel would look the other way.

The long and short of it is; any suggestion that guns are going to be taken away from anyone, by anyone, is laughable in the extreme. Those who suggest such a thing are trying to use "the fear factor", to gain attention, money, power, or more likely..................all three.

Try to think rationally, don't fall for the ridiculous conspiracies.

Let's not go all wishy washy liberal with this. You look at any leftist politician's or media mouthpiece's definition of an "assault weapon" and you will find none other than the AR15.

The author of this thread mentioned no type of firearm, his point was rational thinking on the gun confiscation issue. My point was how irrational leftists are about American gun ownership and at the center of their focus on it is the evil black rifle. The AR15 has inspired more demands for gun control than any other firearm in existence, and that includes outright bans.

Ever hear of the boiling frog analogy?