The Daily Kos has proposed the detailed firearm confiscation plan the NYT and other more delicate souls have been tippy-toeing around.
It’s comprehensive. It’s brutal. It takes no prisoners multi-millions of prisoners. With no due process.
After a mere quick skim I can spot a dozen reasons that while it would turn streets bloody from Miami, Florida, to Homer, Alaska… it still wouldn’t damnwell work. If “work” means eliminate firearms.
For eliminating firearms, it’s completely, wildly laughable. Though I admit it would certainly be excellent at creating both civil war and tyranny.
How ’bout a Commentariat fisking, guys? Go for it. Count the ways that this “plan” would be a savage catastrophe. Tell the world what you think of the Kos masterplan to end “gun violence.”
Have fun.
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Brad points out in comments that the Kos article is not new. Given all the recent, but pussyfooting, calls for confiscation, it’s still all-too-relevant. So let’s let ’em have it. “It” being our words, not our firearms, of course.
These delusional folks are simply not doing the math… They and their supposed enforcers are seriously outnumbered, out-trained, and out motivated. Anybody would think they wanted a civil war they were guaranteed to lose.
Simple answer to this insane threat: No. Your move.
A sure recipe for civil war.
I wonder if the idiot who wrote this ever tried to read John Ross’ “Unintended Consequences?”
Aside from the bloody implications, one of the first things I noticed about why this plan won’t work is that it’s based entirely on recorded lists of gun purchasers.
How many millions of guns have simply been inherited?
How many bought from private parties without documentation?
How many manufactured at home? (And millions more to come!)
How many stolen or lost and found?
How many manufactured before any serial numbers or record keeping were required?
How many gun owners have moved multiple times since buying an on-record gun?
Oh, so many, many flaws in just that one single point of the Kos argument.
Indeed, the writer hasn’t a clue. Indeed it’s a recipe for bloody war. As you said.
But I find the many ways the cluelessness is evident to be fascinating. So many absurd flaws in what he must imagine to be a serious plan.
I notice that the author of the linked article is not volunteering him/herself or their children to go door-kicking…
And I thought that gun-owners were supposed to be the hypocrites.
No.
Now what, Mr. Dictator?
I couldn’t read that whole screed. The grammar was painful, the ‘reasoning’ (and lack of knowledge of existing laws) worse.
Lately, I see a lot of ‘estimates’ of firearms in the US set at 300 million, which tracks with estimates I saw more than twenty years ago. The funny thing about the estimate then… it came from the ATF, which used a standard 20 year life expectancy for firearms. Back then, myself and some friends worked up our own estimates, based on the age ratios of our own collections. We got a number closer to 750 million. Two decades ago.
They don’t know how many there are, who has them, or where. This idiot’s ‘plan’ absolutely neccessitates raids and searches of every structure in America. Metal detector searches of every square inch of surface area.
And more level IV armor than the industry can produce.
“The sheer immorality of victim disarmament aside, one would hope every law enforcement officer out there would stop to consider all the possible ramifications of kicking in several million doors because the occupants are well armed. “”>“The sheer immorality of victim disarmament aside, one would hope every law enforcement officer out there would stop to consider all the possible ramifications of kicking in several million doors because the occupants are well armed. “
One other dumb thing he said is that gun enthusiasts would be left “gumming their Winchester .30-.30’s” Probably one of the most common guns out there.
By the time they hit house number 1, 2, & 3 on my block…..taking our semi-autos but leaving us our lever guns…by the time they go to hit house number 4, they will be mighty sorry they did. Me and my enraged neighbors will teach them something about those lowly Winchesters…..something they won’t like.
Darn it.
Winchester 94: seven in the tube and one in the chamber. Potentially eight dead tyrants per reload. And as fine a rlfle for hunting tyrants as it is for deer. Yes, I’d prefer to have 20 rounds of .308 on tap, with a quick reload, but 8 rounds of 30-30 is nothing to sneeze at.
Did you notice that the Kos piece was written two months ago?
I did not. Normally I’d abase myself and blushingly withdraw. But given its relevance (what with all the recent calls for confiscation), I say let’s give it a fisking.
The author bases much of The Plan on their ability to halt our communications, and has sorely underestimated our ability to maintain communications.
Here’s a great example of pro-gun comms, post elimination of email networks:
Neighbor: “You think those are BATFE trucks?”
Me: “Yep.”
N: “Sure those homemade charges will cause a big enough avalanche to close the pass?”
M: “I designed them myself, you sure you can take out the drivers?”
N: “If not, the guys in the trees will.”
M: “They’re in position. On my count: 3…2…”
And so it begins.
Around 1970 — or maybe 1914 — the Federal Government declared a “War on Drugs” that was really a war on the American People. The government got away with it because the “enemy” didn’t shoot back. I don’t think they will be so lucky this time.
Para, The Miskatonic Manuscript (in case you missed Claire’s review). [grin]
ahhh, joy. Another call for a bloody civil war. The last one killed over 600,000 outright, maimed over a million others, and left scars on the USA that are with us to this day.
Bear is right, I believe his estimate of how many servicable firearms there are is a LOT closer to correct. By the ATFs own count over over 100 million guns have been sold since 2008 alone. The gun manufacturers are making over 8.5 MILLION guns / year. On ‘black friday’ in 2015 alone the FBI ran over 185,000 background checks.
Further, it is pretty easy to make guns, nice cheap submachine guns like the STen. Shotguns are a piece of cake. Somebody who had even a modest CNC setup could make serious amounts of guns. Drilling the barrels and doing the rifling is fairly specialized, but still very very doable. Are they going to go door to door registering Milling machines and lathes?
Ammo is only a small problem. Hardest is the primers, but quite doable with basic high school chemistry.
And explosives, well, lets not go there. I’ll just say this: anybody in the US who has used explosives (with one notable exception) in a killing incident has been incompetent.
Oh yeah, shutting down comm….like that has a prayer. Lots of Ham radio people around, and cheap easy radios are all over.
My main hope is that clowns like the people who support this course of action either A) try this BS while I’m still young enough to be of some use, or B) wait 15-20 years or so, so I’m out of the way and don’t have to see the slaughter and horror of a modern civil war.
Of course, they (that unnamed ‘they’) have more sense than that. They will simply continue the slow erosion of rights, and ‘proper’ education of the kids. In 10-15 years, an action like that proposed might actually work. I sure don’t see any great glimmers of hope from the millenials.
I thought the whole Daily Kos thing was a joke. Guess my reading comprehension needs work. I’ll read it again.
Count the ways? Lemme take off my shoes … nope, still can’t do it, not at 100 rds. per digit. Nor 200 …
And that’s just me. And compared to lots of folks, I’m not particularly well stocked.
@Bob: Daily KOS _is_ a joke. They just don’t realize it.
Wow if this wing nut is serious…
I guess the folks at the Daily Kos have never considered the “consent of the governed” line in the American constitution.
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
All I gotta say is one thing the author has totally neglected is the law of unintended consequences. With a total of 2,212,635 active and reserve military plus 117985 police (including part-time) from all levels of government versus about 24,000,000 gun owners, things would be a little interesting.
Hell I’m not even an American and I know that.
Read my latest, “Meanwhile, Down at the Gun Confiscation…”
http://ncc-1776.org/tle2015/tle851-20151213-03.html
Notice it all starts with an Executive Order. No mention of “We the People”.
Hm, perhaps this is a viable plan to reduce “gun violence.”
Unfortunately, of course, the loud-mouth supporters of such who have demonized their gun-owning neighbors may become the unfortunate victims of an increase in “3 5-gallon gas cans poured on their houses and set on fire during the middle of the night violence.”
I’m surprised that Mr. Bonneau did not include such in “Meanwhile, Down at the Gun Confiscation… ” since police (and their families) do not live behind fortress walls.
I wish I could take credit for this – but Remus at The Woodpile Report treats is gently as can be:
“Nothing says they’ve lost more plainly than apocalyptic tantrums. Their ship has capsized and they’re shaking their fists. Savor the moment. This one is insufferably dreary. After waving the bloody shirt it immediately bogs down into a long procedural fantasy, protracted self-arousal I suspect, with an occasional whiff of red meat intended to, but failing to, keep the reader attentive. Think last orders from the Fuhrer bunker: ghost armies, wonder weapons, unshakable will—that sort of stuff. Touching in a way.”
According to the comments over at the Daily Kos, this guy 43North who wrote the article is known as a “gun advocate.” I am 99% sure that this article is satire.
LBS, I’m unable to see the Kos comments. If it’s satire, it’s incredibly subtle — and very well designed to provoke!
I’m usually pretty good at detecting satire, but even after giving the screed a second read it still looks exactly like something an anti would propose (except for the obvious fact that the writer does know something about firearms, which the typical anti doesn’t).
I’ll try looking at the comments in another browser.
Okay, I read down as far into the rabbit hole of comments as I could. I agree the article was written to provoke. And it worked. Obviously.
A satire by a pro-gunner? I’m still not sure. Given the amount of agreement (or even lack of counterproposals) by commentors, it appears a lot of Kos people would serious get behind such a “plan.” Whether serious or not, the proposal serves as a sort of acid test.
I couldn’t make it all the way through. It just seemed pointless. I like the quote Sawbuck posted here; that about says it all.
Well, I suppose if it does turn out to be a satire, it may have had the intended purpose–to get people talking in a way they haven’t been. 🙂
In reading through it myself, I would not call it satire, although it may well be deliberate agitprop. The classic art of satire usually carries with it a certain tonal signature that I don’t see here. However, the idea that it may be a punch-in thought experiment from an actual gunnie, that got missed by the brass at The Daily Kos, does seem plausible:
– The tortured language, constructions, etc., is uncharacteristic of satire, which is inherently a subtle art that usually pokes fun at (among other things) the target’s self-appropriated intelligence and moral superiority…but it is very much a known tool of Astroturfers and other agents provocateur. As a lifelong gunnie, I know this down to my freakin’ bone marrow.
– He (I suppose I’m presuming “he”) knows a bit too much about guns to be completely believable as a rabid disarmament zealot. At least in my experience, there are certainly disarmers who know a few things about guns, having either served in the military/police establishment, been a casual gun person, etc., but there is always a real wall to what they know. This guy would be far and away the most knowledgeable (in the way he frames gun references, words, etc.–like someone who knows, but tries to sound like he doesn’t) of any serious disarmer I’ve run across. In general, the more rabid they are, the more idiotic; this screed is certainly abrasive and absurd–but not truly gun-idiotic.
– The nightmares he implies seem more ours, than True Believer disarmament freaks’. The thing that I notice most is that they are actually laid out. Again, it’s just too well thought out, even it its absurdity, to seem undeniably serious. It seems plausible that this may actually be deliberate agitprop from someone within the libertarian spectrum–note how he implicitly skewers both sides of the aisle in his constructions (and in a way that isn’t very Kos). Most rabid disarmers on “the left” construct their nightmares in certain ways. Most rabid disarmers on “the right” construct them differently, but again in predictable ways. (And nearly every disarmer I have met is soundly partisan.) What I read here fits neither of those patterns.
– Note the addendum at the end, summarizing poll data just from the first two days after publication. To me, the only reason to do this is to collect results from those who are the most reliable Kos readers; after a certain point, the article will get linked further and wider, and may start to attract results from beyond regular Kos readership. Certainly gunnies understand the “CUM ULLA SELLA IN PUGNO TABERNA” attraction of pissing all over someone else’s pigheaded poll efforts, and 1-2 days seems like a plausible amount of time to get out-linked and an influx of activist results that will skew the results. And just look at the difference between his postings of the first two days (presuming, of course, veracity in his reporting): what was (roughly) 10%, 10%, 10%, 70% respectively, is today 1%, 3%, 2%, 91% respectively. Does this not pretty strongly suggest that core Kos readership is indeed 20% ready to kick in doors today, and 10% more ready to agree with a velvet glove condition?
Sure, I understand that Kos has long been really shameless about its victim disarmament advocacy, but not really like this. We’ve seen it try to maintain the “nobody is coming to take your guns”, “it’s all reasonable”, and above all the mass-public-support fictions; somehow this just doesn’t quite fit either the usual narrative, or the likely departure of the True Believer.
If it does turn out to be an agitprop experiment, I’ve got mixed feelings about it. It doesn’t really tell us anything we don’t already know, and at least for me it has a non-trivial whiff of “become what you behold” about it. Arguably (again in the “CUM ULLA SELLA IN PUGNO TABERNA” sense) there is value if this short-circuits or otherwise disrupts the Hive Mind chain over at Kos, but I admit I much prefer the moral authority of the emerging trend among gunnies for the simple answer “NO. Your move.”
Still, whether or not it actually is agitprop (or even intended satire) in this case, that is actually becoming vanishingly important these days, isn’t it? It’s pretty sad that we’ve reached the point at which it no longer really matters what actually happens in any given case–only that it plausibly could happen; that histories and incentives clearly illustrate that if it’s NOT true in this case, it’s only a matter of time before it will be.
Tiresome times, these.
Kevin — Well put. You’re right that it doesn’t feel at all like satire. But agitprop seems a very apt term, which might apply whether the writer was a gun person tweaking the opposition into examining the logic of their own positions or an anti-gunner laying out a deliberately provocative theory for comment.
[Arguably (again in the “CUM ULLA SELLA IN PUGNO TABERNA” sense) there is value if this short-circuits or otherwise disrupts the Hive Mind chain over at Kos]
I think you’ve put your finger on it. Just because the simple “No. Your move.” appeals to you, does not mean it is going to appeal to the Kos folks. This may well be the trigger that gets them doubting.
If nothing else, and whatever the intention, this article (and others now showing up) really trashes the soothing “We don’t really want to take your guns” meme that has been out there forever, providing cover for the prohibitionists.
BTW Keven, where did you come up with that bit of Latin, anyway? 😉
Paul: if you’re talking about “CUM ULLA SELLA IN PUGNO TABERNA”, that is a David Codrea reference.
I like it. Love it, even. Lets polish it a bit for the media, shorten it, and get it some press.
Light this place up.
I’m tired of the gun restrictions talk. Lets skip ahead, and talk about this, as sincerely as possible. We’re gonna start shooting each other over this shit, might as well get the party started.
We know that the trends today are vastly toward MORE firearm freedom, than toward less. Various restrictions have been rapidly lifted over the past 20 odd years (such as awb, ccw), and only limited areas have added restrictions (ie NY).
In observation, one side of the trend is seeing greater success in the wild. Wildly greater, in fact.
We have little to legitimately worry about I think. Except for some light creeping background tyranny and such steps as will enable it in the future. How to best fight a slow creeping advance?
Entice them to move faster and let the backlash snuff it, or even swing things back in your direction. If anything I agree with the above comments about this article being a subversive non-kos pro-gun placement. If so, I think we need more like it.