As with most people, gun control bills have been on my mind lately and of course what freedoms our elected officials plan on taking away.
With so many guns out in the public sector, banning anything really seems futile in my thought process and confiscation i really don't believe has a chance in hell. However, controlling ammunition whether by something like HR 142 or maybe even better- price controls. When a single bullet cost 1, 2, or even 3 bucks you have really made a lot of the guns on the street nothing more than a club.
Maybe investing in reloading equipment and learning to reload might be a good idea.
I was doing a little thought experiment on the potential consequences of bans, etc. In round numbers:
The federal court system processes 83,000 cases a year.
There are 200,000 federal prisoners.
There are 70 to 100 million gun owners.
A petit jury for a criminal trial has 12 members.
Assuming not all gun owners own items that would be subject to ban, and not all wish to commit acts of civil disobedience, a 1% noncompliance rate should a safe low-ball figure.
So, that is between 700,000 and 1 million new cases the federal court system would have to address the day after a ban on possession is implemented. There is no way the court system can be expanded 8.5 to 12 times its present size to prosecute all the disobedient gun owners. In FY 2010, their budget was $7 billion. It would have to go to $84 billion give or take.
If one grand jury heard each case for only one minute, it would take about 2 years running nonstop to issue all the indictments. Speedy trial anyone?
Imagine if everyone of the 1 million accused then demanded jury trials. That could be up to 12 million citizens called to jury duty.
If each trial lasted 2 days, that is almost 5,500 years of trials - the equivalent of all of recorded human history.
What if they all refused deals, the prison system or probation/parole system cannot be expanded 3.5 to 5 times to house everyone who kept an aluminum or steel or plastic tube that David Gregory possessed without consequence.
Then there is the appellate process.
Simple noncompliance could easily overwhelm the system.