Who do they come after first?

[PhilaBOR]

In the spirit of paranoia inspired by Hillary's and Obama's endorsement of the Australia model of forced gun confiscation, I started speculating on the mechanics of the ATF's plan. I am ignoring for the moment the firefights and ensuing civil war.
Hard to say, but the two top candidates:
Registered NFA items, especially machine guns.
Collect the log books from FFL's containing each gun and who it was sold to.
Don't think it would get past these two lists before the fighting starts, but if it did:
All credit card transactions for ammo, online and brick and mortar.
All hunting licenses
All gun accessory purchases
Active posters on gun forums
All posters on gun forums.

Anybody COMPLETELY off the grid?

[photogpat]

The true "off the grid" guys are in Alaska or the very rural parts of the US.

Google Maps with the satellite view of Northern MN for what I'm talking about.

The well-organized looking camps in the woods should be on the list too. One thing guys forget when they clear a shooting range out to 200-300yds? That's pretty obvious what you're doing.

[Ghost]

One thing guys forget when they clear a shooting range out to 200-300yds? That's pretty obvious what you're doing.

Well I was at the Gander range a couple weeks ago and a gentleman was inquiring about building a range all underground on his property. The needed ventilation was what they had determined was the deal breaker unless he liked breathing lead.

[photogpat]

When I was house painting in college -- we painted a big house out near Orono. It had a 3 car garage with a spancrete floor and a basement underneath. The guy had it all decked out with a 3 alley 20yd range. Heavy duty air handler, 2 of those smoker-eater things they used to have in the bars back in the days of indoor cigarettes, and a steel snail trap at the end directing rounds down into a collector.

Needless to say that cost some coin.

[mrp]

The true "off the grid" guys are in Alaska or the very rural parts of the US.

Google Maps with the satellite view of Northern MN for what I'm talking about.

The well-organized looking camps in the woods should be on the list too. One thing guys forget when they clear a shooting range out to 200-300yds? That's pretty obvious what you're doing.

Damn! Now I'm going to have to buy a Cessna and put out some cones. The wife is not going to be happy.

[MJY65]

Collect the log books from FFL's containing each gun and who it was sold to.

The success of that would largely depend on how cooperative individual dealers decided to be. Would some (any) decide it was worth going to prison over? They could easily destroy their logs. I doubt any big shops like Cabelas, Gander or Scheels would do that. They'd roll right over.

[BigBlue]

Other than the first two items it really comes down to a door-to-door forced house search. And even the FFL record-based retrieval would still require the forced search because nothing prevents someone from having sold, given away, or disposed of a firearm with no paper trail. Or for those folks, like me, who had unfortunate boating accidents. Because without the forced search of EVERY property everywhere there really are just too many ways to miss firearms. People may store them at a cabin, off-site storage, non-gun relative's house, bury them in the back lawn, in the north 40 field or up on the hunting land, etc.

So seizure is really an imperfect solution. Yeah, they'd probably get 60% or a bit more of the firearms but they certainly wouldn't get near all of them. And even if totally turning off the supply line for anything firearm-related wouldn't stop dedicated folks.

If the anti crowd can't see just how futile this is then they really are as mentally defective as they seem. At some point I'd really hope they start to realize that the key to fixing the violence problem in society is by fixing society, not going after a tool. Or maybe that's not even their goal.

BB

[Ghost]

They'd have to implement registration first and then have you bring the items in for your registration confirmation checks at a regular interval. Then they'd have to force you to provide all your registered items or be punished. And that's assuming compliance. Door kicking in won't work, there's not enough kickers.

[MJY65]

I'm amazed by the liberal comments that are posted to various articles after high profile shootings. They are so outraged by the loss of a handful or a few dozen lives that they are willing to imprison, or kill millions of gun owners. These "peaceful" individuals are happy to trot out the threat of door kicking SWAT teams, tanks in the streets and even drone strikes against us. Absolute absurdity.

[yukonjasper]

The first will be anyone they can cross reference with mental health issues, any sort of violent offenses or charges, chemical dependancy history. These first because "we can all agree that these people could be dangerous ".

Once they get "consensus " that people who have been on Ritalin or had problems socializing according to the school records - insert whatever you want here, for instance, is X times more likely to be a problem, they will act for the benefit of the rest of society.

[rtk]

" Catch me if you can, I'm the ginger bread man". Author unknown

[Bearcatrp]

Word would go out so fast IF they would do something this stupid since the big cities would get hit 1st. Since all of mine were stolen and didn't file a report because I was to embarrassed, I don't have anything to worry about.

[linksep]

Anybody COMPLETELY off the grid?

I am... oh, crap, not anymore.

[MJY65]

.Since all of mine were stolen and didn't file a report because I was to embarrassed, I don't have anything to worry about.

Yes, I'm sure they'd just check the "all stolen" (or boating accident) box on their form and apologize for any inconvenience.

[Lumpy]

Wait until 3D printers can produce truly workable guns. It'll be like trying to ban bathtub gin.