Confiscation is impossible: Why the entire gun control debate misses the point

Every few years the American gun debate circles back to the same question: is the Second Amendment an absolute right, or does it allow sweeping restrictions, up to and including taking guns away? Both sides argue as if the answer decides the matter. It doesn’t. Even if the absolutists lost every constitutional argument tomorrow, the government could not confiscate the nation’s firearms. The obstacles are cost, courts, verification and supply, and the attempt would throw away real, unmeasured benefits the country already enjoys.

Start with cost. Americans privately own roughly 500 million firearms, more than one for every man, woman and child in the country. Compensating owners at even $500 per gun would come to about $250 billion, before a single government lawyer, judge or agent is paid or a single warehouse is rented. For comparison, Australia’s 1996 buyback collected about 650,000 guns, less than two-tenths of one percent of the American stockpile.

Then there are the courts. Every contested seizure or valuation becomes a case: takings claims disputing whether compensation was just, Fourth Amendment challenges to searches, and criminal prosecutions of owners who refuse. Tens of millions of Americans own guns. If even a small fraction fought back in court, the result would be hundreds of thousands of cases, each with a right to appeal, landing on a court system that is already backlogged.

As a former counsel for the Florida Department of Revenue, I know what it costs to defend even one contested government action through........

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