W What you would do, and I'm not advocating this, is to make them illegal, ban their sale or manufacture here, and then seize and destroy them in every case where they are discovered. The problem would persist for a time, of course, but the supply would tighten rather rapidly. Everyone who wants a gun, even criminals, would have to be a lot more secretive about it. And their cost would rise dramatically. In time our society would more closely resemble those societies where guns are already illegal. So "can't be done" isn't true, but again, I'm not advocating this.
Every competent American citizen should carry a defensive weapon. Yeah, some wacko goes and shoots up a movie theater or high school.... ever here of one shooting up a police convention... or even a donut shop? Of course not... fear the people inside are likely armed. Easy to shoot up a bunch of innocent, non-armed civilians. Different matter when you fear them possibly shooting back! Even my wife finally "got it". Used to be, she "didn't want guns in the house" (I, of course, told her.. "too late".) She's now come around to learning to shoot and getting a concealed carry permit.
Ignorant and naive. Manufacturer sale and transport of alcohol was made illegal here for over 13 years. Supply flourished, no one that wanted a drink went without for lack of supply. We've been waging a "war on drugs" now for decades. While prices are high I've never heard of anyone doing without for lack of supply. Lack of money to purchase - maybe. But not because of any shortage due to the law. Even the feds admit they stop less than 10% of the drugs crossing ours borders. Quantities measured in TONS. There is not a reason in the world to believe gun smuggling would be any different. You can't compare the US to other "civilized" countries with gun bans. Few if any have a 400 + year gun culture like we do. Few if any ever had the wide spread gun ownership we do. In some cases as a result of a previous gun ban(s). Nazi Germany for example. It's simply not apples to apples.
At least you're attempting to answer the question. I give you credit. So let's follow this through and I'll give my own thoughts on what I believe would happen. 1. All guns are made illegal. Sales are banned, a grace period buyback is instituted to return all guns to your local police department and you would get the avg. value of the weapon from the Federal Government buyback program. The number of legally owned firearms in America - by civilians is estimated at 290 million. To be ultra conservative (meaning, to take the extreme low side on value) let's assume that the avg. firearm cost is $500. That means the Federal Government's buy back program at 100% of LEGAL compliance (forget the illegal weapons, lets assume criminals don't turn in their guns because the government wants them) is $145 Billion. LOL! Riiight. And that's the low side of the equation. And then there's the cost of the program, managing it and the destruction cost of all those millions of weapons. Who knows how high this goes? Additionally, the ban on all gun sales removes $33 Billion from GDP, and approximately 200,000 employees from the workforce - and that's just the workers that work directly for manufacturers and direct gun sales. It doesn't count all the folks in the gun retail environment, shooting ranges, sportsman clubs, gun smiths, pawn shops,....whatever. But lets ignore all this and say President Ricter doesn't care about the economic impact, he wants guns off the damned street. Ok. 2. Guns are removed from the legal population. Now we've got a few million illegally owned guns out there. Crime statistics show that the vast majority of gun crimes are committed by people who have illegal firearms. So you don't really get rid of any crime. Sure, you might make a 1% dent in the overall crime rate by removing the few and far between situations where some legal gun owner goes nuts or something happens, but this would likely be countered by a LARGE increase in violent crime as criminals now know they don't have to worry about homeowners and people with guns to defend themselves. 3. As time goes on, the price of illegal weapons on the streets skyrocket. Weapons begin to be smuggled in through the border, and legal residents go out and acquire an illegal firearm to protect themselves from the criminals that have them. I know I would. I'd get a pistol and keep it safe in case I was ever attacked in my home. Better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6, right? 4. People begin to be arrested for defending themselves with an illegal firearm, and subjecting normal law abiding, otherwise harmless individuals because they now own an illegal gun after you took their legal one away. Meanwhile the criminals using guns continue on their merry way, unmoved by President Ricter's ban - because if I'm a criminal and I'm going to commit murder (which might incarcerate me for life), why do I care about your silly gun law? Is that what you were hoping for? Guns will NEVER be banned. Ever. Ever ever. There will never be the political capital to pull it off, nor the money to make it happen. But even if it did, it wouldn't work out like liberals want it to. You have more of a chance of passing a 100% income tax. Or a constitutional amendment to make the national language Swahili.
I wouldn't have denied there would be problems in any case, but over time guns would be destroyed, guns would wear out, ammunition would be consumed, all faster than replacement (say, smuggling) and the incidence of guns being used in street crime would fall. If none of this is true, why do gun sales surge everytime our paranoid moonbats fear there is a ban coming?
Gun sales surge because of speculation. People buy weapons thinking the value of them is going to go up should they be banned (and it would). As for guns wearing out, you know little about guns, apparently. Guns can be maintained almost indefinitely with some relatively simple care. My uncle has an M1 Garand from 1942. Still shoots perfectly. I baby my weapons, and they will likely be passed on to my son 20 years from now - and they'll be as good as new. You can't even use the "people would run out of ammo" argument, because it's not difficult to load your own ammo, all you need is the spent casings. You'd certainly cut down on the amount of ammunition spent in practice, that much would work. Sure, it is possible that 50 or 75 years from now you might see a possible dent in the number of illegal guns, but with technology as it is now (3d gun printing) I can just imagine what you'd be able to do in 50 years. The rest of your argument is a pipe dream.
To make "wear out" wordier, I'm sure (formerly) law abiding gun owners would continue to care for their guns properly, but that's not the fate of thousands of stolen and illegally held guns. They're treated like crap, thrown in rivers, etc. Reloading would amont to very little. In 50 to 75 years I think the "dent" would be quite large indeed. Besides, we'd have an entirely different mindset by then. It's already in the works, every passing year sees fewer households with guns, and every slaughter adds to the number who want guns more tightly controlled. The impossibility of achieving perfection is no excuse for not trying to achieve improvement.
If you remove the supply of guns and ammo, you'll see a significant behavior change on existing weapons as they become "coveted". You're not thinking realistically. Guns "thrown in rivers" if that's actually a frequent occurrence is because they can get another one on the cheap off the street. Remove that, and behavior changes. As for the fewer households with guns, do you have a source for that? As for the "every slaughter adds to..." how do you explain the violence in Chicago and the fact that gun laws are going the opposite way you are advocating (allowing concealed carry for the first in God knows how long, etc).