How would a federal gun ban work? House to house searches?

[The Magistrate]

29. You Miss Several Points Here, Sir

Most important is that this is a hypothetical discussion: someone asked how, if the thing became law, it would be implemented. the discussion is simply about how a government would go about enforcing a law barring private ownership of guns were it placed on the books. There are a number of standard moves towards securing compliance and enforcing it. Solicitation of voluntary co-operation is an obvious first step.

Why you labor under the idea that a fair market price would have to be paid quite escapes me. The actual mechanism is that people are being told to turn proscribed articles in to the authorities to avoid arrest and prosecution for possessing them; calling it a buy-back and paying a token sum is simply giving people a more pleasant way to view it, and a bit of a sweetener into the bargain. It would, like locking a car door, serve to keep the amateurs out of the play. If you, or anyone else, wished to refuse co-operation and take your chances as an outlaw, that would be your own look-out. Most people have no idea how to exist outside the law for protracted periods, and the likelihood you are one of the exceptions to this seems small. One small word of advice: be sure everyone who knows you possess a firearm likes you, even loves and values you....

No such law would be passed without public support for it being at clamorous levels, sufficient to over-awe legislators who are used to responding to lobby groups instead. In such a climate, no one would give the north-faced end of a south-bound rat what 'wingers' or other hostile minorities thought; they would be so out of step with the popular mood necessary to bring such a law into being that they would be powerless and marginalized. Do talk of how bad it would be for some party or other, or how could it would be for some party or other, were such a law passed today, is quite beside the point. That is shifting the ground of the discussion from the technical question of how such a law would be implemented. In the present political climate, no such law could be passed.