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Coming Together...?
- Thread starter Maplehead
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We all understand that we have some rough years ahead of us and that's by no means limited to guns (the whole culture is changing). What do you propose though? I vote (not that it matters when elections can be rigged) - any other ideas?
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There are 400 million ARs in this country?
Rockrivr1
NES Member
There was an article posted here on NES that said there is an estimated 425 million ARs in private hands in the country. Wouldn’t doubt it as I’d bet many owners have many more then just one.
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Noone really knows but a lot of sources estimate there are 400 million total guns in America. And up to a billion in the entire world. I srsly doubt there's anywhere near 400 million ARs in the entire world.
Mill out an 80% lower. The .gov wont know you have it.
I would say at least double
allen-1
NES Member
Any estimate is more like a SWAG, (Scientific Wild Ass Guess), than a proper estimate.
Most of the people in this forum are in New England, and many are in Massachusetts. You're used to a very tightly regulated firearms market, with every transaction tracked and recorded.
I live in Georgia now after living in Connecticut for many years. It's not like that in the rest of, (or perhaps "all of"), the country.
If I buy a firearm in CT, I have to fill out a DPS-3C, (I think that's the correct form number), to go along with the 4473 that I have to fill out if buying from an FFL. The DPS3-C is multi-part - one for the seller, one for the buyer, one for the SLFU (State Licensing and Firearms Unit), and one for the police chief in my town. Paperwork, tracking, recording.
If I buy a firearm here in GA, the only paperwork that ever is legally required is the 4473 - and that's for a purchase from an FFL. Private sales don't require any paperwork. None, zero, zilch. It's somewhat common in practice for people to require that the buyer display their weapons permit - but it's not legally required.
So, if allen has say, 6 AR's in his safe, and Todd wants to buy one - it's a cash deal, face to face, no paperwork. Now we have one more gun owner with an AR. The number of ARs in circulation hasn't gone down, but the number of owners has changed. And when Todd moves from Georgia to Florida - there's no paperwork.
When allen turns around and machines another 80% lower, there's no paperwork and there's nothing to tell the counters that another AR has been born.
Rockrivr1
NES Member
No doubt it was a SWAG estimate, but one that I don’t think is unrealistic. As pointed out with 80% lowers that number is potentially higher.
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Go Chadster!
Where are you guys getting that figure?
NSSF estimates it's 5-10 million ARs.
ATF estimates 17 million "assault rifles" which includes AKs, and all other "killy" style rifles.
Even if you double or triple or even quadruple those numbers to account for 80% and stuff, that's less than 75 million ARs.
Are you sure the "425 million" number wasn't all guns as opposed to ARs?
800 million ARs is about 2.5 for every single person in the USA. I know more gunowners (which is already a subset of the population) that have zero ARs than have 2.5 ARs. If you take the roughly 40% self-reported proportion of gunowners in the US (by household, so if five people live in a house with one gun you're already overestimating), that's more than 6 ARs owned by every single gunowner in America.
If you took the avg. US household size and assumed half of those owned a gun (from within the 40% subset), you're now looking at every single US gunowner needing to have 8 ARs each to reach that figure. I imagine if you asked truthfully on here the number of people having even five ARs would be less than 50%. Let alone eight ARs per person.
I just can't imagine that's accurate.
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Knives can be concealed upon one's person much more easily than an AR can. They have no serial numbers, few if any moving parts, and their sale is completely unregulated, at least in 99.99% of the country. My bet is massive non-compliance and underground caching of banned rifles and parts and maybe some ammo, but remember that .223 is a very popular varmint round and lots of bolt action rifles are chambered for it. Unless the Biden administration follows Mexico's example and bans it from civilian possession and use, I believe the cartridge continue to be commercially available.
Mesatchornug
NES Member
I think you're hitting this nail on the head. (One of the things we have to remember is that we're subject to a bit of consensus bias in that we all are deeply involved in the firearms conversation, so we assume that the majority of gun owners are generally like us. In reality, most own one or two firearms and think of them as just a thing they own, rather than a part of who they are.)
Throughout the 90s and early 2000s, the estimate was 300-350M firearms in circulation. Based on NICS checks, there are an estimated 350M+ transfers over the last 20 years, though everyone keeps that 350M pretty stationary. Obviously, some of those NICS transfers represent used sales, but it can't be more than 50% or there wouldn't be the healthy industry for new firearms that we have. That means 4-700M firearms in circulation, conservatively, based on NICS and the like.
With the explosion of 80% builds, it's probably not unreasonable to say that we're closer to that high end (possibly nearing 1B total) of which maybe 10% (SWAG) could be home-built, and the majority of those might be ARs. I'd could imagine 100M ARs in circulation without a ton of effort, but certainly not 400M.
Firstly, I think any change will need to start from a prominant, power backed source like a wealthy conservative that's not afraid to put himself out there, basically, another Trump. Given that I could envision a "well regulated militia" down to the local chapter level in every town. If it becomes known that the areas "brown shirts" are going out to confiscate somebody's guns then the local militia shows up at the gun owners house as well, not letting the brown shirts carry out their socialist duty. I know my visions and ideas may be crazy but things are getting crazy and crazy is how we'll probably have to be dealing with things in the near future. You mentioned a changing culture. In my lifetime I never would have thought the great U.S.A. would be entertaining socialism, but alas, here we are. Lastly, wasn't the Left doing something similar already with ICE? Didn't they form local groups on the West coast to thwart ICE's efforts and show up at illegals homes to keep the ICE officals from entering? I'm pretty sure I read about that going on. I know we had one local Massachusetts judge let an illegal out the back door of the court building here when she discovered ICE was waiting for him outside the court room doors.
Rockrivr1
NES Member
Yeah, just going from what the article said. Could be a number from all over the spectrum. So lets say 40 million ARs on the outside. For a buyback we'd be looking at a lowball figure of $200-$300 per from the Gov't. That still $12,000,000,000. That's just ARs. No way they can come up with that kind of coin without bankrupting the country.
Would it matter? I'm sure the majority would be 2A loving people. Maybe these "militias" are formed out of the local gun club groups. Also, I'm sure many Democrats would be a part of this as there are many that believe in the 2A. (Don't know any personally.) These groups wouldn't be about private discussions and such where we'd have to worry about an "informer". They would just be about ensuring and protecting our rights to bear arms.
Our technicals all have horns that play the melody to this George Benson tune.... if you don't hear the Bridge/transition play then its an impostor. So that's one tip off, at least.
View: https://youtu.be/9tZWLRh3xmU
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I agree with you there. I think that the vetting process is the most important step toward forming a group with any longevity. I wonder how the various undergrounds in ww2a did it
My comment was whatever the accurate count of AR15's in the US, double that with 80% that have been built in to complete lowers.
Fair enough, I was hoping you weren't saying double the 800 million to 1.6 BILLION ARs, as awesome as that would be.
I'd say doubling 25 million ARs to 50 million ARs would be fair. 75 million ARs is pushing it, and I doubt it's 100 million, but maybe. 400 million, no way.
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