Got a bad case of forcible citizen disarmament (a.k.a. 'gun control')? Massive non-compliance is just what the doctor ordered

When I saw a piece of commentary titled "President Obama won't take your guns (even if he wants to)," I figured it would be more AHSA-like propaganda telling gun owners not to worry about Obama's rabidly anti-gun rights voting record (in fact, don't even think about that voting record). After all, Obama himself said much the same thing:

So he tried again. “Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress,’’ he said. “This can’t be the reason not to vote for me. Can everyone hear me in the back? I see a couple of sportsmen back there. I’m not going to take away your guns.’’

As it turns out, I had not given J.D. Tuccille (the author) nearly enough credit. His argument is not that Obama won't try to push his citizen disarmament agenda, or even that such an endeavor on Obama's part would fail for lack of legislative support. Instead, he argues that bans are one thing, and reality is quite another.

In support of this argument, Tuccille offered some statistics. For example, in reference to New York's Sullivan Act:

In fact, the gun laws are so byzantine and arbitrary that many New Yorkers have stopped trying to comply.

The result? Nobody knows how many illegal guns are in the city, but the most common estimate is two million shared among a population of about eight million. That's far more illegal guns than legal guns.

He also quotes an estimate of 20 million illegal firearms (in addition to the legal ones) in Germany (population 82 million). Compliance with Australia's semi-automatic rifle and shotgun ban, Canada's "military-style" rifle ban, and Austria's pump-action shotgun ban is, in every case, similarly estimated to be extremely low.

He then quotes James B. Jacobs' Can Gun Control Work?

In Boston and Cleveland, the rate of compliance with bans on assault rifles is estimated at 1%. Out of the 100,000 to 300,000 assault rifles estimated to be in private hands in New Jersey, 947 were registered, an additional 888 rendered inoperable, and 4 turned over to the authorities. In California, nearly 90% of the approximately 300,000 assault weapons owners did not register their weapons.

This is not to argue, of course, that restrictive gun laws should not be opposed with every bit of political power we can muster. Being made a "criminal," for exercising one's Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental, absolute human right of the individual to keep and bear arms is not, has never been, and will never be acceptable.

The point is that passing draconian gun laws will be the easy part of the enemy's agenda. If we don't make our actual disarmament utterly impossible, laws notwithstanding, we have already surrendered the courageous legacy of freedom secured by the Founding Fathers.