Why won't it matter? The Feds don't have the manpower to enforce confiscation upon the populous.
I think nationwide there are only about 150,000 federal law enforcement officers. While that may sound like a lot, one has to remember many of them have very specific missions and may be barred by law from enforcment outside of their subject matter. Additionally, many of them aren't trained for going door to door against armed citizens. When you narrow it down, the number of Federal LEO's qualified to perfrom such tasks is very slim--so much that the task would be insurmountable without local help.
The problem is not that they don't have the manpower to go around and pick them up - the problem is how much the population will comply with the order to drive down and turn them in?
That's how the confiscations went down in England and Australia and I'm pretty sure that is how they've gone down in every other country that has tried it. Most of the US presents a problem to the government in confiscating firearms: they don't REALLY know who has what because other than NICS - there is "registration".
The MA state government doesn't really have that problem - since they have the CHSB records from the FA-10's. So in this state at least they could just issue the order to come down and hand them in - and then round up the stragglers after that.
I've been saying it for a while - but I'm going to say it again because the time has become very appropriate: the FA-10 is a double edged sword. YES - the government knows what you have. But that presents a problem for them - because if they initiate a confiscation and NOBODY hands them in - or a very small portion of the people hand them in - then the bureaucracy has a problem staring them right in the face. They will have a list they want to check off the checkboxes on - and no way to do it. Unlike in other areas of the country where the bureaucracy can just throw up their hands when their confiscation efforts fail - and claim that they didn't know who had what so how can they go get them - that doesn't work here in MA. Here THEY KNOW - and when they can't collect - THEY WILL HAVE A PROBLEM. That is a problem they will have to solve - because otherwise they will have to admit defeat. When they try to solve it - the whole thing will go off the rails and cost a crapload of money to enforce.
People who don't understand what I'm talking about - need to go read Saul Alinsky and what he said about screwing with bureaucracies.
The real screw job we can give them is not making them shoot us down for the rifles - but rather making them dig up all of New England trying to find them. Defeat thru exhaustion. Guerilla warfare. Think with your heads bitches.
People need to start getting their heads straight and get resolved to what they're going to do if / when this goes down.
My advice would be to find sympathetic friends in VT or ME or NH - and make the weapons disappear. Make them come looking for them. Your ass might end up in jail. But that is classic civil disobedience techniques. If regular law abiding citizens start filling up the jails - and Deval has to let actual criminals loose to hold what were once law abiding tax paying citizens - he just bought himself a shitstorm.
The real problem children are the Fudds - they are the people that need to be told in no uncertain terms NOT to cave into their Fudd instincts and hand them in. Having our fellow citizens sell us out is really the biggest problem.