Prohibition of Guns Would Follow the Same Path as Alcohol

Almost 100 years ago the days of alcohol prohibition swept across the United States. The sale, production and transportation of booze was deemed illegal by the 18th Amendment to the Constitution and the Volstead Act.

A provision for private ownership and consumption was not included in the federal statute, but local law tended to be stricter in many cases. Religious organizations who pushed for the ban rejoiced that the alcohol demon was once and for all exorcised from the public square.

Except it wasn’t.

The laws put in place were difficult to enforce. The law was flouted continually and brought about the rise of the American Mafia and other criminal organizations that were more than willing to fill the void.

Also a majority of the public who would drink alcohol were responsible law-abiding citizens. The law was deemed illegitimate because of resultant widespread corruption. Not to mention producing alcohol is actually pretty easy to make on your own.

The Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment in 1933 and alcohol with all its drawbacks is still available today.

Will the next round of “Prohibition” apply to guns in the near future?

The Second Amendment states: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Automatically people refer to bearing arms to mean guns. However, someone could be armed with a knife, grenade, Molotov cocktail, baseball bat, scissors, pepper spray or any other device to deter or induce an attack.

A gun just happens to be one of the choices and an effective one at that as recent events have shown.

In order to counteract that statute, most likely another amendment to repeal the Second Amendment would be needed. Needless to say 36 states would not sign on to ratify such an amendment on a national level.

Then if you look at the prior example of alcohol, enforcement of a firearm ban would be equally as nebulous.

The government at least has a database of people who do it by the book. Those guns the Feds could find without too much trouble.

Even now, those who actually do go through the background check don’t tell the truth on the form and Vice President Joe Biden admits that the government doesn’t have the time to prosecute those who submit false information on Form 4473. Not to mention the folks who find it unnecessary or tedious to go through a background check would be a little bit harder to find.

The easiest avenue is to look at the body count and pass the blame to a gun. Guns are amoral because they don’t care who uses or doesn't use them, much like a brick that could be used to smash a window or build a hospital.

The much harder task is to objectively examine why people have to kill other human beings.