If They Come For Your Guns It Will Be A Herculean Task For Them

For decades, the typical progressive talking point when firearms owners have ripped into gun control-promoting politicians is that “nobody is coming for your guns”. They point to a long line of fellow traveler Congresspeople, Presidents, and bureaucrats who have voiced gun control proposals, but have never explicitly mentioned confiscation. Some have, like when Senator Feinstein expressed a desire to have a mandatory confiscation law put into place, or when VP (and P candidate) Harris threatened to ban ARs via executive action within 100 days of her assuming office? But overall the public face of gun control is usually cloaked in platitudes and “safety”. They haven’t accomplished confiscation, not from a lack of trying, but from the fact that the core groups of Second Amendment Radicals and armed citizens push back, since today’s appeasement is tomorrow’s loophole.

However, after the notorious shooting incident in Georgia a few weeks back, and the second attempt on the life of Presidential Candidate Donald Trump, the mask has slipped a little bit more. The lunatic fringe feels a little more emboldened, especially since it’s a federal election year, and has actively called for the ban of private firearms ownership, and the confiscation of existing stock.

You may be wondering, if the unthinkable were to be ordered, what would happen in reality?

Note: This thought exercise was inspired by a post on X by the always articulate and engaging Rank Badjin, with some influence by the author of the Enemies Foreign and Domestic series, Matt Bracken.

To be blunt, it wouldn’t be what the anti-2A people in this nation think it would be. There’ll be no mass piles of firearms being crushed like what was depicted in Australia after the Port Arthur incident. There won’t be mile-long lines of gun owners turning in their property under the cruel eyes of armed State agents. How it would likely go down would be quite different from what the enemy envisions, if it were even to happen.

The Unthinkable - A Firearms Confiscation Order Is Enacted

Throughout recent history, the regime has shown it’s disdain for the processes of governance put into place by the Founding Fathers when they drafted the Constitution of the United States. Thoughtful deliberation and consideration has given way to the game of retaining and expanding government power. A law will be drafted, totaling up hundreds of pages, and the opposition will be given scant time to read and review it before a vote comes up. Or the White House will take the express route and draft up an executive order, usually consisting of hundreds of pages of tap dancing and gymnastics, in order to enact a policy without having to wait for Congress to come up with a bill and pass it. Recent examples include the soon-to-be-stricken Biden-Bloomberg executive orders on pistol braces and 80 percent builds, and the now-stricken ban of bump stocks enacted by Donald Trump. In both cases, the regime was looking to sidestep Congress, and hope no one noticed. And even if they did, an executive order is typically binding once it’s in effect.

Anyways, a firearms confiscation order would not be in the context of a law or in the context of a practical Amendment to the Constitution. Both processes take time, time in which motivated firearms owners could bolster their defenses, both in and outside of the court system. A law would be debated for month, a Constitutional Amendment could take years even just to get it considered.

So, if the unthinkable order comes down, it’ll be an executive action by the White House. Think of what VP Harris promised, but in a broad sweeping version. Here’s how it could happen.

The Order Is Enacted - Private Firearms Ownership Is Made Unlawful

There’s been a notorious shooting incident. There’s some casualties, and those casualties are media-friendly. White kids, LGBTQ++++v2.928, maybe illegal immigrants. The shooter isn’t Marxist so the story will have some legs. The executives of the regime are unfortunately openly anti-2A, so an executive order template is dredged out of some hard drive or GovCloud folder somewhere. The dates are changed, some in-vogue bureaucratic hysterics are sprinkled in, and the order is printed out and rushed to the Oval Office for the signature of the sitting President. Technically an executive order doesn’t require a public comment period, so after the President puts her pen to paper, the order is in place. In 21 days, the private ownership of firearms will be unlawful in the United States. From a single-shot .22LR used at a youth camp, all the way up to crew-served machine guns held by collectors or FFLs, the private ownership of guns will be “over” in 3 weeks. The government figures it’s ample time to give the citizens of the nation a sporting chance to comply, but not so much time that a coherent legal challenge can make it up to the Supreme Court. Armed government employees will be allowed to keep their privately-owned weapons, but as a “safety” measure they will be required to register them as if the guns were NFA items. Can’t risk someone retiring from the force and sitting on their hardware, after all. Since there’ll be no sales of firearms to citizens moving forward, all FFLs except those key manufacturers who supply government will have to cease operations. Every gun shop is toast, and the only legal manufacturers of guns would be companies like GLOCK, SIG Sauer, Colt, FN, and so on.

Current firearms owners across the nation would be instructed to start turning their firearms in to the nearest police station, ATF office or FBI branch. The police and Feds receiving the guns would be instructed to log the identities of all those who turn in their firearms. After all, owners may have forgotten about a few in the rush to comply, and a follow-up could be in order.

Of course, the battle lines are immediately made even more apparent. Usually along the major party lines, but with a few notable defects going in both directions, Congress, as is the nation, is split. Progressives cheer since to them freedom is a privilege doled out by the State, and armed citizens stand in the way of that process. Liberty-minded folks of course object, and start battening down the proverbial hatches. Both factions take to social media, causing even the larger services such as X to experience slowdowns. Citizens in red states flood gun shops, even though the firearms they buy will be illegal in less than a month, and the FFLs still run NICS inquiries and have the customers fill out the 4473s. Blue state gun owners, resigned to their fate, plan on compliance or laying low and hope that the state government registries are corrupt. Regardless of jurisdiction, a few gun shops throw off all pretenses of compliance and just throw the doors open, letting anyone with the funds come in and purchase what they need. They figure they’re screwed anyways, so why not go out with a bang? Of course, 3D printer sales spike as well, because reasons.

The countdown continues unabated, with the deadline looming closer and closer. Finally, it passes. There’s no immediate reaction, since the government does begin the arduous task of tallying up the “take”. Percentage-wise the “haul” is bigger in blue states where firearms registries are commonplace. Both state and federal government entities have sent notifications to all registered gun owners in those jurisdictions, often aided by willing governors and the heads of state agencies with access to that data. With their fate more certain, blue state gun owners mostly turned them in, at least the guns the government knew about. In red states it’s a little different. Most governors forbade state agencies from assisting in the process, citing (italics)Prinz v United States which forbids the federal government from commandeering state resources. Notably, most red states refused to turn over any actionable data on gun owners, whether it was the names and addresses of carry permit holders, or the holders of hunting licenses. Various FFLs in red states who were smart enough to keep their bound books and 4473s offline destroyed their records as the countdown neared, and even after. There’s only so many enforcers taking to the field after all. Those FFLs who went with EZFFLMasterBoss dot com (hosted on Microsoft Azure no doubt) have essentially been giving their data to the Feds since they signed up, which would make the regime’s job a little easier in some aspects.

Along those lines, the regime will have their work cut out for them. A quick rundown of the forces on each side is in order:

Yeah, I did these numbers awhile backand my concepts have changed a little due to new data and increased thinking on the issue. Don’t worry, it still means the same thing.

Team Statism, total numbers (boooo) - all numbers estimated in partnership with our newfound friend, Grok.

• 1.195 million active-duty regular US military troops from all branches
• 442,000 National Guard troops from all states
• Around 800,000 Reserve soliders from all branches
• 137,000+ federal employees who are issued a gun for their job aka Feds.
• 850,000 state and local police officers

Team Statism - realistic numbers.

• The conservative tooth-to-tail ratio for the military is 25 percent of the troops run some sort of weapon system, with the remaining 75 percent being logistical and administrative soldiers. Those soldiers get a gun, but aren’t really expected to use it. Across all the armed forces, this means around 610,000 troops run a gun, attack helicopter, or bomber as their job. Probably knock that down to less than 400,000 since the only thing that matters here is foot soldiers. You can’t round up firearms with a B21 bomber.

• Even if the primary mission of federal law enforcement becomes firearms confiscation from the citizenry, other crimes will need to be addressed. I’d say out of the 137,000 Feds, maybe 65,000 (a little less than half) could be peeled off for anti-gun duty. It doesn’t do much good to have a mission of firearms confiscation to prevent crime, and let crime happen because you’re too obsessed over enforcing an executive order.

• The 850,000 state and local police would probably not be considered “reliable” outside of blue cities and blue states. Knock that down by 75 percent. Maybe 200,000 police officers would be at hand.

• Grand total of 875,000 bodies for “the mission.” Shave off 30 percent for defections. 612,500 left over. I’m pessimistic with this number because we all saw how many armed government employees stayed silent during COVID. Their pensions are more important than morals I guess. Think a bunch of people who idolize that narcissistic Boomer Fudd trash, Tim Walz.

Team Gun Owners Of America (yeah!) total numbers - estimates by Grok and myself

• There’s over 120 million firearms owners in this country who own at least 1 gun. There’s over 600 million firearms of all kinds in their possession. Youth model .22LRs all the way up to crew-served machine guns. And stuff like missiles and rockets.

Team Gun Owners Of America realistic numbers

• Sadly, some firearms owners would comply, either due to political convictions (guns were really just a hobby for them) or a “temporary gun owner” status, where they purchased a firearm during civil unrest because the fires got close to them at one point. Also some people who believe in the right to keep and bear arms decide to maybe turn “something” in and hope that satisfies the agents of the State for awhile. They still lay low though and keep quiet. A pessimistic estimate I often toss around is that 90 percent of the gun owners in the US would lay low and wait for things to blow over, either through active compliance, or the proverbial “lost them in a boating accident”. Still, that leaves around 12 million motivated people, a lot with skills, who can cause a ruckus. Hassling logistical chains and so on up the ladder. Also those who lay low may decide on occasion to partake in some fun…maybe add another 2 million into the mix on a varying basis.

• For reference, 25,000 illiterate goat herders essentially control Iraq versus the most advanced army in the world. Said army has more latitude in terms of use of force than domestic forces in this hypothetical. Iraq is the size of Texas. 12 million literate people from all trades could mean gun grabs are hemmed up in the cities. In general these are the people that drive your trucks, maintain your infrastructure, and grow your food. Worth noting.

Implementing A Gun Grab Won’t Be Smooth

Us citizens of the United States aren’t Australian, British, or European. We haven’t had our spirit of independence beaten out of most of us like the subjects of those blighted realms have. US hoplophobes like to point to those places as where gun confiscations have been successful, but they fail to note the fundamental cultural inferiority as opposed to us. We don’t like being told what to do, especially by our own government. And the fact that percentage-wise, we’re so heavily armed, means we can do something about it if needed.

A gun grab by executive fiat would not run smoothly at all, even if somehow the government managed to do so with total surprise. We’re a stubborn lot. But, by necessity there would be telltales, because the government would want the best chance of success.

The Canaries In The Coal Mine

The first indication of trouble would be a major uptick (even more so than now) in inspections of FFLs by ATF Industry Operations Investigators and armed agents of the same. Chances are there’d be a prior executive order undoing the legal restraints on frequency of inspections, enabling IOIs and agents alike to inspect as often as they needed to acquire the desired data. They’d potentially loop in other agencies like the FBI as well. The FBI would come in handy for processing the data hauled from digital cloud-hosted FFL platforms. The firearms industry is close-knit, and everyone talks to each other, and any uptick in ATF enforcements and inspections is usually noted. A major uptick would definitely be noticed, leading anyone with half a brain to envision trouble on the horizon.

Additionally, such an immoral action as a gun grab by the regime may wake up latent morality in some government employees, especially if they have family in the private sector who are avid firearms owners. Mary at the NFA Branch in Martinsburg might hear rumblings of forthcoming action and alert her Uncle Bill, who has quite a few guns, since she loves him dearly. John the Congressional intern might get snippets of conversations in the halls of power. He’s from a red district and all his friends back home are armed. Ironically this could squash the whole notion before it becomes reality, but it probably wouldn’t. The regime is itching to move, and on “GG (Gun Grab) Day” they do.

The Public Relations War

However, before GG Day, the PR machine is turned up to the max. Ads on all platforms announcing the executive order and deadlines. Naked PR plants with various talking heads and noted gun-grabbers like David Hogg exhorting the virtues of “doing the right thing”. Various Fudds and quislings on the news turning their guns in at the authorized surrender points. Hollywood gets in on the game, with the usual regime trash like Taylor Swift, Green Day, Diddy (as conditions of his pardon no doubt!), Bruce Springsteen, Dave Bautista, Travis Kelce, and so forth all doing social media posts. Amplified by the willing progressive sheep, it’s an onslaught of nagging, 24/7.

After GG Day, the tone turns a little sinister. The regime’s already pre-selected targets that aren’t likely to comply. Big-time 2A media personalities, patently offensive gun bloggers, one or two legit crazies for credibility, and the like. The regime goes in hard with the few skilled operators that are willing to participate, and there’s either a firefight or the selected target is coerced (Surrender or we kill your family!) to come out and let the confiscation occur. CNN is in tow, and a few regime shills like the Krassensteins are invited to stream. Their X feed craps out, but Zuckerberg gives them all that he can on Meta platforms so the normies see what’s up. Regardless of what happens, the message is clear - comply or die. The handpicked propagandists amplify the message. Along with a new factor, the snitch line - gunsnitch dot com, @gunsnitch, 888-BIG-RTRD, whatever. $5000 to your CBDC account if your tip leads to an arrest. Matt Bracken went over this part in detail in his novels. Check ‘em out.

Nosy neighbors, progressive offspring cut out of the family fortune, they all become the eager eyes and ears of the regime. $5000 might get you a cheeseburger due to hyperinflation, but that’s one less meal you have to buy. Seems dark? Sure, but it’s not going to be easy, even with the PR machine and regime data hoovering happening.

Gun Grabbing Will Take A Lot Of Work

Remember, there’s only about 612,500 people detailed to this romp nationwide. All the snitches in the world don’t matter much if you can’t get anyone to stack up and do the physical labor needed to attempt a gun grab. David Hogg isn’t going to put on battle rattle and try and kick down a door. The bluehaired fat Redditor isn’t going to waddle from her couch and go through a gun owner’s wall Kool-Aid Man style. Oh yeah, it’ll be the people who work for a living, who have received varying levels of training on tasks like this. Some will be enthusiastic, others less-than-so. Those people hope it will all blow over soon and they can maybe make it to max pension and leave. Anyways, there’s labor involved.

One agent with a rifle isn’t going to approach an unknown household and bang on their door demanding entry to execute a search-and-confiscate warrant. That’s a good way to go home in box. So, at the minumum, the enforcement actions will consist of two-man teams on average. Noted enthusiasts will get a bigger response, but most searches by necessity will be small teams. They’ll only be able to do so much in a given day, and it gets worse if there’s even token resistance.

House 1 of the day’s roster might be a false positive. NICS, if it’s permanently storing data in violation of the laws establishing it, will only have the records of the first owner of a given firearm. In the case of a concrete state registry, bureaucratic inefficiency has the grabber teams going over ground they already covered, i.e. the owners already complied, or the data is flat-out incorrect. Anyway, House 1 may have sold that GLOCK 19 years ago and be unarmed, or they turned it in, or their current armaments are carefully hidden. They present well, so the grab team moves on to the next place.

House 2 is a different story. Since the grab effort makes a lot of noise, and neighbors talk, House 2’s residents knows there’s a grab team in the neighborhood. House 2 knows they may get a visit, or they may not. Regardless they are as ready as any scared-out-of-their-minds citizens can be. They’re probably not operators, but they frequented the local outdoor range and maybe got some sophomore-level defensive carbine classes in. Today they get “the visit”. There’s a perfunctory knock and yelling by the grab team, and after a second, they force entry. Sure enough, that’s when the citizen response happens. The residents, numbering 4, all have some sort of weapon at hand. One resident, concealed behind a couch, neutralizes the first grabber with a lucky shot to the grape. The second grabber gets off a warning message to command, while flipping his issued M4 to rock-and-roll and spraying the room in a panic. 2 residents are DOA, a third is injured. The lone resident who is unscathed figures “in for a penny, in for a pound”, and shoots wildly in the direction of the second grabber. The second grabber is hit, but not fatally. Unfortunately the resident has run dry on ammo, and the grabber gets off a lucky shot with his secondary weapon, a pistol, and neutralizes the last resident. Regardless, this grabber team is down for the day, and potentially longer. Others will have to pick up the slack.

House 3 is the residence of a local police officer, who is none too thrilled about the state of things. He “defected” just before GG Day, and turned in some personal gear and all his department-issued weapons. Someone didn’t bother to check if he still had the keys to the station armory though. Between intelligence fed to him from friends on the inside, and some other retired buddies coming over for a party the night before, House 3 is a firecracker. The grabber team is MIA in less than a minute. Neighbors didn’t hear much. Just something that sounded like an angry nailgun and maybe a scream and some laughter.

This situation repeats daily across the cities and suburbs of the nation for a few weeks. Some grabbers start to get the hint and not show up for work after awhile. Casualties are piling up on both sides, and except for the dedicated cadre of sociopaths present in endeavors like this, the grabber teams are having their doubts. Reports of grabbers having their homes burned down or their spouses kidnapped are popping up. There’s leaks in the regime after all. Rule 308 keeps them out of some neighborhoods entirely.

The rural areas are most definitely Indian Country. The grabber teams simply won’t go there. The regime debates actual military maneuvers, but finds that the soldiers capable of such things are in short supply, both from terrible recruiting numbers over the past 4 years, and defections as the grab effort slogged along.

Also, like in other sad civil conflicts around the world, snitching becomes less effective. Habitual rats become known, with predictable Home Depot-themed outcomes.

Eventually, the whole effort would collapse, and the executive order is either de facto null and void, or de jure null and void after a court finally wakes up and rules on the whole fiasco. States form loose alliances with each other, and “The Split” becomes a stark possibility.

A Gun Grab Attempt Doesn’t End Perfectly For Us

In the dystopian nightmare where the regime runs even more amok and implements a gun grab by executive fiat, it wouldn’t be an easy victory for us Second Amendment Radicals and armed citizens. Good people on our side would be hurt or even lose their lives. Uninvolved non-gun owners, aka the normies, could be harmed as well just by being associated with gun owners. State and local government workers who may see the light of reason and try to help us out could find themselves facing the ire of the federal regime. Sure, in the end it would likely be a win for us, but it won’t be a pretty victory.

However, it’s a battle that should be avoided, but not at the cost of our inherent rights. If fighting is what it comes down to, fight we must.

There’s been a century of appeasement by our side, and it seems over the past few years, we’ve finally started to push back and win peacefully, especially on the state and local level. By area, the majority of the nation is Constitutional Carry now, and the numbers of gun owners grows significantly every month it seems, even with the lackluster economy and disgusting monetary policy of the regime.

This battle can be won, without a single shot fired, if we put our minds to it. Regardless of who wins the federal elections, we’ve got to keep the pressure on. The stakes are too high.

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