Series of random thoughts:
A registry serves no purpose if it isn't to confiscate the guns at some point. It doesn't have to be wholesale confiscation. But if even one person who has registered is forced to surrender their property, there ya go. It will absolutely be used for this purpose. Trying to say it won't be is believing in an impossibility. But those people don't deserve guns! Whatever. Make that case. Until then, trying to set up the registry and claim it won't be for that is dishonest, and dishonesty shouldn't be part of the conversation.
But we register cars! Yes, and we pay taxes on them, and we get them confiscated if we don't follow certain rules about cars, etc etc etc.
But we register houses! Yes, and we pay taxes on them, and they get confiscated if we don't pay those taxes.
Pass the registry. Tax the shit out of it, confiscate my property. I'm not an idiot, I know what you're trying to do.
You will never convince me this isn't the plan, Because it is the plan.
Based on the charts above, the most successful way to reduce gun violence is to confiscate all the penises. Fortunately we do have a registry of those.
And yes, I definitely wasn't clear. You could pass a law to confiscate all the guns. Aside from it not being constitutional and having such broad support that it would be exactly as effective as speeding laws (everyone speeds, please post about how you don't, liar).
You pass a law outlawing gun ownership. Some people DO turn in their guns. Many don't. The ones who don't do feel some pressure to hide their guns, and they certainly stop showing them off.
And then the neighborhood kids don't even know they are there. And maybe the other folks in the house don't even know they are there.
And that's exactly how responsible law-abiding gun owners behave currently. For the most part. There are people you know right now that you know of as anti-gun that have a fucking gun in their closet.
So yes, you "could" pass a law like in Australia. A constitutional amendment clarifying the second amendment would be the real way to go about significant gun control, if you were serious. But you aren't serious, you don't want to solve the problem and you don't want to respect the activities of law abiding citizens, you just don't like gun owners and want to be smug.
Take out all the suicides. Take out all the law-enforcement related shooting (setting aside that disarming the police is a real conversation I'd like to have at some point, what would it take to get that to happen and lets do that). Take out all the shootings by criminals who were already not allowed to have guns. Look at that number of homicides compared to elsewhere. And then ask would you rather someone come at you with a gun, or a bomb? The knife argument is a red-herring. The total homicides statistic is a red-herring. At best, legislation could impact how many unlawful shootings are committed against another person by law-abiding citizens. It's not fucking many. I'll grant that it is probably nonzero.
The compromise on the second amendment is that we're arguing about what caliber of gun is OK, and how quickly it can shoot, and not arguing about my right to park an F16 in my driveway. Gun nuts would look sane in a world where there were guys driving tanks because, you know, there's nothing in the constitution that says I can't own a tank. You should go watch Elon Musk talk about the relative ease of purchasing an ICBM. Fuck your jetski, I want a Nimitz class.
And on the "nobody is trying to outlaw cars" front: what do you think the self-driving car is about? Eliminating driving to reduce car related crashes is happening. I fully expect in our lifetimes to see driving on public roads to become illegal. I can't fucking wait actually. The difference is that taking out the human element is possible with driving. You can't remove the human element from violence. We have every reason to believe that we can save 20-25 thousand lives a year by making driving illegal. If you managed to eliminate every single gun from the USA today, you would likely reduce the total number of deaths due to violence by a few hundred. You would significantly reduce the total number of suicides. But you can't eliminate the guns. You just can't. They're here. There's something like 30 guns in the US per person. You are pursuing a futile path. Start coming up with other ideas. Get out of this box.
There's a solution to gun violence, and I think it's likely going to be the bio-metrically locked firearm. Someone's going to figure that technology out, and then we'll get a real gun control law with some teeth. "House Bill 2027, the militia regulation: It shall henceforth be illegal to own or possess a firearm that is not bio-metrically locked against use." Slap some wi-fi on that sensor so it can't unlock within 200' of a school, or, you know, me.
Also, Australia didn't confiscate all the guns. They confiscated specific types.
I am not a gun owner and think it's fucking retarded to own guns, but whatever floats your boat. It's like horses or classic cars to me. They're fun as shit, I get it. It's way easier to hunt meat with a gun than a knife, I personally hunt with a wireframe cart at the fucking H-E-B. Nabbed a rotisserie cooked chicken just last week. Took me three rounds! It almost got away but the old lady didn't have a concealed license so after I tripper her I was able to wrastle it away. We all agree that people with ill intent shouldn't have guns. There's our common ground. Lets figure this the fuck out already.