Hello again everyone. Welcome to Washington Gun Law tv. I'm Washington Gun Law President William Kirk. Thanks for joining us. Yes, I am still at Washington's premier indoor shooting facility Security Gun Club, still working on the studio. Promise you it's coming. We are going to talk about a really hot button issue here, and that is gun confiscation. Now, obviously, I don't want to be accused of being a click baiter, and so why on God's green Earth would I be talking about gun confiscation? Well, it appears it's because one of the two presidential candidates appears to be really big favor of it. As a matter of fact, if the Congress doesn't act and pass unconstitutional legislation within the first 100 days, she's just going to do it through executive order, and she's in so much as talked about mandatory buybacks and confiscation. Now, once in a blue moon, we actually have those nightmares. What would it actually look like? And I finally decided to sit down and really do a little historical look at how it has a gun in the past and take a look at some more modern examples to see is it really even possible here in the United States. So today, let's spend a few minutes and let's talk about what would gun confiscation really look like?
Okay, so we are talking about gun confiscation only because one of the two presidential candidates appears to be talking about it quite a bit, and I know it gets many of your blood boiling, and I understand that as a lawful and responsible gun owning American, the ultimate doomsday scenario would be government agents running around trying to round up the firearms. Now, is that even possible? What I did to get through this video is I wanted to take a look at it two ways. Number one, from a historical perspective, how has gun confiscation worked in the past and how has it worked out for the people who had their guns confiscated? I think you probably know the answer to that one. And then number two, what are more recent, more modern examples that we can take a look at? And what we do is I want to really kind of figure out how could it possibly be executed in the United States.
And the more and more I began to realize how difficult it would be, the more and more I began to realize that it's probably not particularly plausible. Okay, now let's just take a look back. Let's just go through modern history and take a look at how well civilian disarmament has worked out for other societies. Let's start in 1911 with the Ottoman Empire. Yeah, the Ottoman Empire spent the years between 1911 and 1917 rounding up just about every firearm they can get their hand on. And shortly after completing that task, they went on to slaughter about 1.5 million Armenians in what is now known as the Armenian Holocaust. 1929, the Soviet Union. Hey, believe it or not, an arms band was not originally part of the Bolshevik revolution. No, no, no, no. That was the idea of Joseph Stalin, who was once quoted as saying, if the opposition disarms well and good, if it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves.
Which is exactly the way that he then ran his country. And he did more than just disarm a lot of people. Yeah, he unli them. The estimates are in the millions as to how many people were killed during the Soviet Union purges. And of course, Joseph Stalin was also quoted as saying, if Americans fight against gun confiscation, feds can nuke them. I'm sorry, that wasn't Joseph Stalin. That was California representative Eric Swalwell, 1935 China. Oh, what did Maton say about disarming the population? Every communist must grasp the truth. Political power groves out of the barrel of a gun. Well, I'll tell you this. If you didn't agree with Chairman Mao's ways of thinking, yeah, you would be. Unli estimates are somewhere around 65 million. Chinese were slaughtered during that particular regime, 1938 Germany. Well, the Nazi party went through and disarmed almost all racial minorities that they could get their hands on.
How did that work out for them? Well, we all know it is estimated that 13 million Jewish citizens as well as other ethnic minorities were all slaughtered during the Holocaust. 1956 Cambodia. Hey, it wasn't really an issue until poll pot came into power. But once he did that, he disarmed the entire citizenry and then spent the next few years slaughtering approximately 1 million of his own citizens in the now famous killing fields. Now that's just 20th century history right there. So let's take a look at some 21st Century history or ongoing events, which of course comes from our good friends to the North Canada. You see the emperor up there? Justin Trudeau actually announced an assault weapon ban all the way back on May 1st, 2020, and also said that those weapons would all be subject to mandatory Canadian buyback. We are now more than 1600 days since the announcement of that policy.
And Canada has not rounded up a single firearm yet. Not a single firearm has been surrendered to the Canadian government under this announcement that is now more than four years old. Why is that? Because Canada's a bunch of WSIs. Well, there's a little bit of truth to that, but yeah, apparently the federal government and the Prime Minister Trudeau did not realize that all of these assault weapons have all sorts of components and all of these components, which of course can be detached, they all have monetary value as well. So even though Prime Minister Trudeau actually told the Canadian people that this program would only cost somewhere between 400 and 600 million, current estimates are actually, and these are government estimates are going to cost the Canadian $2 billion, but economists up there are actually saying no, it's more in the neighborhood of about 6 billion to do this mandatory buyback.
Now, if it's going to cost 6 billion to buy back all of the assault weapons in Canada, how much is it going to cost to buy back all of them in the United States of America? Even assuming that everyone was more than willing to sell 'em back to the government. We are talking in the hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in reimbursements that would have to be sent out. Oh, another big problem, and this would probably be even a bigger problem here in the United States, is Canada is still looking for somebody who can actually go out and round those guns up. You see Canada Post, which is a Crown Corporation, essentially the equivalent of their postal system, they were all ready to go. They were going to send out boxes to people where you could just set your firearm in and voluntarily surrendered. It's a full service operation.
They're running there. But the postal system got a little freaked out about having to ship all of these assault weapons all around the country, and they basically put a kibosh on that. So at the current time, not only has Canada not even collected a single firearm or firearm component, they have no idea how they're going to do it. Of course, what they have been able to create though is millions and millions of dollars in new government jobs, which are being filled by people who are still sitting around picking their ass and scratching their head, figuring out how are we going to get Canadians to give these guns up? Now, I recognize that the dynamics in Canada are far different than they are here in the United States, but let us also remember that the dynamic difference would make the number of firearms that one would have to retrieve exponentially greater.
And knowing Americans, real strong desire for our inalienable rights and our civil liberties might be a little bit more unwilling to surrender the firearms. And then of course, comes the question of what if any involvement with local law enforcement have? Because as a defense attorney now for almost 30 years, I can assure you that most chiefs of police, most sheriffs that I've met, most captains of state patrols and so forth are vehemently pro Second Amendment, and none of them ever signed up in law enforcement to go kicking down doors of lawful responsible Americans to confiscate their firearms. If confiscation efforts were ever to occur in many parts of this country, I can assure you that those parts of the country would become very noisy very fast. So the bottom line is, no matter whether it's Vice President, Kamala Harris or any other dimwit who's just trying to chum the waters of their base, they will threaten with gun confiscation over and over and over.
And yes, trust me, if they could actually do it, they would do it. But when you actually slow down, you stop, you think and you realize the complexities of what would occur, it's highly improbable, if not completely impossible to ever occur. That says my opinion in August of 2024. If I end up doing another video in a year or two about this topic, we're probably all in serious trouble. Listen, if you got any other questions about this or anything else related to what's left of our Second Amendment rights, you guys should know how to get ahold of Washington Gun Law by now. But if you don't, that's okay. That information is down there in the description box. Maybe you got an idea for a video that we should be doing around here. If you do, go ahead and click on that link right there. Some of the best ideas we ever had aren't our ideas at all. Maybe you just want to be part of our newsletter. If you do, the link to subscribe is down below in the description box. And then finally, and most importantly, let's everyone remember that part of being a lawful and responsible gun owner, like we talk about all the time here, is to know what the law is in every situation and how it applies to you in any instance that you may find yourself. Until next time, thanks for watching. Stay Safe.
YouTube Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AcFqlsEoYk
Credit: William Kirk, Esq., Washington Gun Law