megapope:

Say we go the way a lot of people say they want to and enact Australia-style measures - that is, completely banning semiautomatic weapons and heavily limiting caliber and magazine size of the weapons that remained legal. Australia has a population of 24 million people, which falls between the sizes of Texas and Florida. America’s total population is over 13 times that of Australia. We also have a far higher rate of gun ownership than Australia did at the time: 1.1 guns per capita vs. 0.24, as well as a population far more evenly distributed than Australia’s. Even if you did decide tomorrow to round up all the guns it would be just physically incredibly hard to do, even if American gun culture weren’t what it is.

Then there’s also the ideological implications. America is also unique in having the public ownership of guns constitutionally protected, the only other countries with such a clause are Mexico and Guatemala, both of which are modeled after the American constitution. This is because citizen access to firearms is wrapped up in our creation myth. Of course it’s more complicated than this, but the popular perception is that the American Revolution was a popular armed revolt against oppressive British rule. Having that in our history and a constitutional protection based on those events makes gun ownership in America far more political thing than it is anywhere else in the world. You simply cannot convince people here that turning in all of their firearms to the government is a good idea, no matter how many mass shootings you point to.

Also it’s incredibly easy to make guns and nearly all of our gunsmiths would be out of a job if such a law were passed, if you think they’d all just roll over and start making model trains instead of making AKs and other easily mass-producible firearms to sell on the black market you’ve got a far rosier view of Americans’ willingness to follow laws than I do. They couldn’t even get us to stop making alcohol, what makes you think they’ll stop people from doing something they believe to be their constitutional right and their only protection against a tyrannical government?