Nope

Most people are, by nature, law abiding. If you banned ownership of guns you would see the vast majority being returned (particularly if you paid a trade-in value).

In a stroke that would save a huge large number of lives from accidental discharge and '5 year old killed playing with mummy's revolver' cases.

If you ban the sale of guns you stop the ridiculous rate of increase of gun ownership.

If you ban the sale of ammunition then a good chunk of those guns remaining in private ownership will become unusable for their principal purpose when the owner's stock of ammo runs out.

If you crack down on self-defence laws like "It's perfectly legal for me to blow your head off if you step on my land", you will further reduce the actual use of these guns.

You will never stop a nutter accessing an illegal weapon (or even a legal one), particularly given how many residual firearms will be left in the US. Heck, the UK can't even do that (Moat) and we have a ban (and Gascoigne).

But you could put a huge dent in the number of accidental firearms deaths and over a relatively short space of time you could change the whole sub-culture surrounding the fetishism of firearms. and you would reduce the risk of a disenchanted teenager accessing their parent's guns or being able to pick one up from the local gun shop and toddling down to the local school.

Once upon a time, not actually long ago, the idea of banning smoking in public spaces and heavily restricting how they could be sold was poo-pooed as being pointless. But it's had a huge effect.

You can never eradicate the risk, but you can make a significant dent in it.

Posted By: CWC, May 25, 11:19:58