We have not talked candidly about what is necessary for the supply-side formula to work. We have not confronted the reality that the existing inventory of guns is vast.
Need-to-Read Ping Courtesy of a Member of:
Posted on 01/21/2009 9:10:47 AM PST by School of Rational Thought
Gun control in the United States generally has meant some type of supply regulation. Some rules are uncontroversial like usertargeted restrictions that define the untrustworthy and prohibit them from accessing the legitimate supply.
(Excerpt) Read more at lawreview.law.wfu.edu ...
See my posts above in this thread. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised if you read the article in its entirety.
Sorry... should have ended my sentence with “in his calculations”.
One worry, however, is the argument that the most dangerous among us have an inelastic demand for guns.
...which is perfectly true, but only one piece of the supply-side argument. What we actually create is two different markets operating by precisely the same economic rules but with different results. We see evidence of this in the price structure of fully-automatic firearms in the U.S., where the population capable of legal possession is small and known, the supply stringently controlled, and the price highly inflated. Its corresponding illegal market has a population that is unknown but possibly even larger, a supply unconstrained by legality, and prices that are well within those that might be expected in a normal, legal market. A black-market firearm might cost $1000 on the street where its legal counterpart, if even available at all, costs $10,000 or more.
This is not the effect honest gun control is after. (I use the qualifier "honest" because there is clearly an element within the gun control advocacy that is highly dishonest about its intentions). Nor do the examples of Great Britain and Ireland imply that control of supply is likely to be possible even in island countries.
The consequence is that the old adage "If guns are criminalized only criminals will have guns" is not only valid but has sound underpinnings in economic theory that explain in part why firearms-related crime rises under those circumstances. Two different demands, two different supplies, one set of rules. It makes perfect sense.
The author's broad conclusion, that this is unlikely to be an effective approach to the control of the occurrence of a commodity within a population, applies to things other than firearms - drugs, alcohol, fireworks, and a host of other prohibited items. An interesting article, and I'll have to give it some thought. Thanks again for posting.
If I did not know any thing about the origin of the article or it's purpose, that is just what I would think. In reality this is a map illuminating some of the obstacles to be overcome before the final objective is taken.
True. The article also states in its conclusion that lawmakers bent on gun control must face the problem presented by the "blocking power of the remainder" (existing guns, many of which have vanished into the secondary market). In lawyer-speak, that's damned close to "You'll actually have to go and get them, house by house, street by street, city by city. If you have the balls" (or be prepared to wait several generations, hoping all the while that the tendency towards defiance wanes).
I enjoyed the fact that the article mentioned the surge in sales that occur each time people foresee a supply restriction. Previous examples were given, but dismissed as not adding much, percentage-wise, to the overall supply of existing firearms. This current buying frenzy might not be quite so statistically insignificant.
We have not talked candidly about what is necessary for the supply-side formula to work. We have not confronted the reality that the existing inventory of guns is vast.
Need-to-Read Ping Courtesy of a Member of:
Did you read the article? I did and I did not get the impression the author is a gun grabber. He presents a proposition and then argues that it can not work with very rational arguements.
How does that make him a gun grabber?
Ominously, he suggests and rationalizes routine circumvention of constitutional and legislative processes by use of obscure regulatory powers of ill-defined federal agencies (which has already begun), and throughout his thesis he cavalierly uses the dialog of the hard-core gun control lobby. There is actually as much detail to be found about his true thoughts and opinions in the comments he includes in his footnotes as in the text of his many straw-man theories.
He is very much a hand-wringing, frightened little dogooder (an empty room with a gun is more dangerous that an empty room without a gun???WTF??? Unless the gun can operate itself, without human malintent, they are perfectly equal), who is hell-bent on bending the Constitution to save us and our society from his imaginary (and in his eyes, socially deviant) "defiant class" and ultimately from ourselves, when in reality it was designed to protect us from him and his ilk. He routinely and blithely glosses over the blatant and pervasive violations of civil rights his proposal would instigate against every citizen of this nation (violation of the rights of one is the violation of the rights of all). He cautions against "unintended consequences" to denigrate technical modifications to firearms made to circumvent gun control legislation, but fails to caution against the far more likely and devastating unintended consequence of the infliction of abject tyranny upon a disarmed populace (apparently they don't require history courses at Wake Forest's Law School) when discussing his pet project.
Another telling slip on his part is his admission that total gun control in America could take as much as "400 years", and his willingness to pass the task along to subsequent generations. That tips his Marxist "march of history" hand.
I fear we have only heard the beginning of him. He bears extreme scrutiny and maximum exposure to the light of day. This exactly the blueprint for the destruction of the 2nd amendment). Either he wrote this as a reflection of their strategies, or they are using this as a blueprint for their plans. They are too close to be coincidental
That book scared the hell out of a lot of wannabe totalitarians...
“you mean that private individuals could actually take direct action against us for policy?”
Yeah, Skippy, that’s the box that gets reached for when you make the ballot and soap box ineffective through voter fraud and the “fairness” doctrine.
Man...
The Turner Diaries are coming to life before our very eyes.
“I read it as well, and I saw those same points, but I believe he is in reality, merely postulating them as traditional arguments against gun control for him to deconstruct later in his tome.”
Where does he deconstruct them?
The problem some readers seem to have with this article is with the “intent” of the author, inferred from his “tone.”
The actual argument is that anti-gun laws will not work in the US given the hundreds of millions of existing guns.
Yeah, I read it. And I still think that the "hidden agenda" is to point out the need to not only prevent the sale of new guns, but to remove those still in existence, with the view to getting legislation passed to do both.
The anti-gunners NEVER come out and say directly what they plan to do, it's always a campaign if mis-direction.
The article was posted for the intellecutally curious, which I advocate. 
By
What one should take from this article is that anyone who supports the second amendment needs to redouble their efforts and be vigilant against the coming attack by the Obama administration.
And buy unregistered tools.
Question for the more knowledgeable than I...
Say someone bought some tools from a FFL back in pre-AWB ‘94 days. Yellow sheets were signed, etc.
Do the feds get copies of those sheets, or do they stay with the FFL?
And on a side note, do FFL’s have to turn over their sheets on demand, or can there be a tragic accident that destroys them all, if necessary...?
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