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What you would do, and I'm not advocating this, is to make them illegal, ban their sale or manufacture here, and then seize and destroy them in every case where they are discovered. The problem would persist for a time, of course, but the supply would tighten rather rapidly. Everyone who wants a gun, even criminals, would have to be a lot more secretive about it. And their cost would rise dramatically. In time our society would more closely resemble those societies where guns are already illegal. So "can't be done" isn't true, but again, I'm not advocating this.
At least you're attempting to answer the question. I give you credit.
So let's follow this through and I'll give my own thoughts on what I believe would happen.
1. All guns are made illegal. Sales are banned, a grace period buyback is instituted to return all guns to your local police department and you would get the avg. value of the weapon from the Federal Government buyback program.
The number of legally owned firearms in America - by civilians is estimated at
290 million. To be ultra conservative (meaning, to take the extreme low side on value) let's assume that the avg. firearm cost is $500. That means the Federal Government's buy back program at 100% of LEGAL compliance (forget the illegal weapons, lets assume criminals don't turn in their guns because the government wants them) is $145 Billion. LOL! Riiight. And that's the low side of the equation. And then there's the cost of the program, managing it and the destruction cost of all those millions of weapons. Who knows how high this goes?
Additionally, the ban on all gun sales removes
$33 Billion from GDP, and approximately 200,000 employees from the workforce - and that's just the workers that work directly for manufacturers and direct gun sales. It doesn't count all the folks in the gun retail environment, shooting ranges, sportsman clubs, gun smiths, pawn shops,....whatever.
But lets ignore all this and say President Ricter doesn't care about the economic impact, he wants guns off the damned street. Ok.
2. Guns are removed from the legal population. Now we've got a few million illegally owned guns out there. Crime statistics show that the
vast majority of gun crimes are committed by people who have illegal firearms. So you don't really get rid of any crime. Sure, you might make a 1% dent in the overall crime rate by removing the few and far between situations where some legal gun owner goes nuts or something happens, but this would likely be countered by a LARGE increase in violent crime as criminals now know they don't have to worry about homeowners and people with guns to defend themselves.
3. As time goes on, the price of illegal weapons on the streets skyrocket. Weapons begin to be smuggled in through the border, and legal residents go out and acquire an illegal firearm to protect themselves from the criminals that have them. I know I would. I'd get a pistol and keep it safe in case I was ever attacked in my home. Better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6, right?
4. People begin to be arrested for defending themselves with an illegal firearm, and subjecting normal law abiding, otherwise harmless individuals because they now own an illegal gun after you took their legal one away. Meanwhile the criminals using guns continue on their merry way, unmoved by President Ricter's ban - because if I'm a criminal and I'm going to commit murder (which might incarcerate me for life), why do I care about your silly gun law?
Is that what you were hoping for?
Guns will NEVER be banned. Ever. Ever ever. There will never be the political capital to pull it off, nor the money to make it happen. But even if it did, it wouldn't work out like liberals want it to.
You have more of a chance of passing a 100% income tax. Or a constitutional amendment to make the national language Swahili.
