Here’s how - at least for the millions of AR’s and AK’s that were legally purchased:
1. ATF requires all manufacturers to send them serial numbers of all such weapons made - just as they do now requiring history of where a weapon was sold that was used in a crime.
2. ATF then goes to every FFL that sold these weapons, and gets from them the name/address/data on every client who bought one of these weapons.
3. ATF offically contacts each legal owner with written letter requiring registration/and-or/confiscation of said weapon with notice of immediate arrest if weapon is not registered/turned-in in 30 days.
4. ATF plus Homeland Security plus TSA pack up their ammo and SWAT teams and begin processing arrest warrants.
5. The SHTF when many legal weapons owners take up arms against ATF and their friends and many on both sides die.
6. Martial law is declared. Civil war begins.
3. ATF offically contacts each legal owner with written letter requiring registration/and-or/confiscation of said weapon with notice of immediate arrest if weapon is not registered/turned-in in 30 days.
4. ATF plus Homeland Security plus TSA pack up their ammo and SWAT teams and begin processing arrest warrants.
I am reminded of a story I read many years ago - Country A majority party politicians began preparing for war against a much smaller Country B, which had no army. The night before the scheduled invasion, the minority leader is awakened with a knife at his throat, and informed that the leadership of the majority party had just been assassinated, and he was now the new leader. The politicians wanted war - they got it. Country B did not have an conventional army ... they trained all of their young men to be assassins.
With that story in mind, consider an alternate scenario, an out of the box response.
Alternate 4: Upon receipt of the letters, a small fraction of recipients, particularly white haired geezers, decide that the FedGov has finally stepped over the bright line of the Constitution that protects the citizens from the FedGov, and thus the FedGov from its citizens. They find their local ATF offices and begin the process of setting up ambushes of employees silly enough to go to the office. Others decide that, what is good for the ATF, is good for the EPA, and duplicate the process. Others decide that the FDA, who is sending SWAT teams to regulate farms, might also make a good target. Others, burning at the humiliation at the hands of the TSA, decide some payback is in order. And lots of geezers target the IRS offices that reside in most cities. Liberal judges that twist the Constitution are selected by some; DOJ employees also become at risk. Liberal politicians screaming for gun confiscation, and their staffs, are targeted. The CEOs of the “crony capitalist” companies are added to the target list. The day that the confiscations are scheduled to start, the ambushes begin. It is a target rich environment. There are so many targets that they simply cannot all be protected, or even properly investigated.
The Main Stream Media at first will not report any of the ambushes - no need to give other gun owners ideas. The body count rises. Alternative media spread the word. MSM entities are notified that they will become targets if they don’t start unbiased reporting, and the reasons for the rebellion (i.e., gun confiscation really does infringe the right to bear arms). It only takes a few MSM killings for the MSM to be nudged into reporting the issues, not just the blood. More white haired geezers, and some of their younger friends, join the effort.
Within a month, the entire regulatory machinery of the Federal Government grinds to a halt, because no employees are willing to take the chance of going to work. Several Universities discover the perils of being a “gun free zone”. The entire public school system shuts down.
The FedGov responds by declaring martial law, and trying to move all employees into guarded compounds. The guards become targets. Electricity to the compounds is shut off with just a few well placed bullets. Electricity to the greater Washington D.C area is turned off. Then it turns nasty.
When the politicians of a large Eastern city direct their LEOs to join the hunt for the geezers, several well placed rifle bullets drop the electrical power and water entering the city. The inner city boils over into riots. The LEOs now have much larger problems than finding geezers.
An IT geezer shut down the power to the computers that supported the EBT transactions. Riots began within 12 hours. Some Chicago geezers shut off power to parts of Chicago, and gangs boiled out into the suburbs.
The politicians discover that there isn’t enough manpower or drones to patrol the hundreds of miles of the power grid. When a Governor tries to rally his LEOs, water and power to the Capital city are turned off. City and State politicians then begin declaring that the FedGov can deal with their own problems.
The FBI is powerless, because ... there is no organization that they can infiltrate and roll up, just a bunch of white haired geezers who have had enough, acting independently or in units of 2 or 3; and they are unable to get cooperation from State and City LEOs.
Air travel shuts down because not enough TSA agents are willing to go to work.
FedGov finally begins to understand the phrase “consent of the governed” and announces that the registration and confiscation process is to be abandoned, and amnesty is declared in an attempt to stop the bleeding.
But the pendulum has swung. Many of the State Governors decide that the 2nd Amendment is not the only bright line of the Constitution that has been trampled -— the “regulate the commerce between the States” has been twisted to the point that the FedGov regulates how much water can flow through your shower or reside in your toilet. The State Governors sense that they can take power back from the FedGov. A majority of the States demand that the whole body of the “regulatory state of the FedGov be abolished, and that the 16th and 17th amendments be repealed. Others decide that the welfare state should be abolished as well, including Obamacare. Then it gets really nasty.