While we do not comment on intelligence matters, we will say the counterterrorism and homeland security communities remain vigilant and well-postured to defend against attacks here in the United States. The FBI and DHS, working with our federal, state and local counterparts, share and assess intelligence on a daily basis and will continue to work closely with law enforcement and intelligence community partners to identify and disrupt any potential threat to public safety.

xFor reference, when they were first banned here in 1989, there were an estimated 100K black rifle named weapons, all semi-auto, in private hands. Less than 2K were ever registered with the state as “assault weapons”.

Once legal workarounds like goofy stocks and bullet button mag releases became commonplace, an estimated 1-2M EBRs have been sold hereabouts in the last decade-plus.

If so many as 2K of those ever get registered this time, I will be astonished.
(That’s assuming they even allow that, which as of this moment is far from clear.)

At a loss of only 1 cop per confiscatory visit (and some of us will prove much better marksmen than Herr Wolfgang P., above), they’re going to need quite a number of new cops, which takes them 12-36 months@ to recruit, select, train, and deploy) and I just don’t see it happening. After they lose five or ten, the popular sentiment will be to go all Dorner/BLM, and start picking the rest off pro-actively.

And as a rule, the average gun owner has about 5 times the tactical training and weapons-handling experience as the average cop, so that won’t go well for them either. I’d guesstimate that more than a miniscule fraction would be itching for the opportunity on both sides, and the police will be playing Custer to the general population’s Sitting Bull & Crazy Horse, for some decades.

Regarding the ‘average gun owner’s level of training and experience’ being five times that of police officers… It’s been a while since you’ve been to a public range, hasn’t it? I can assure you that the average gun owner is no better than the average police officer, and frequently worse.

I’d say out of every hundred current gun owners in the US, less than ten have any formal training on firearms, and that was probably from either the military or the boy scouts. In most cases, it was decades ago. A high percentage of American gun owners probably go months or years between shooting sessions. My brother in law, for example- he’s owned a .22 LR rifle for years, and shoots it about every two years. This summer, he bought his first centerfire rifle, an AR. He’s shot it once so far, at some cans in the desert. I explained to him the process for zeroing it beforehand; when he got back from shooting I asked him if he had any problems with zeroing and he told me that he had skipped it so he and his son could get to blasting cans.

Based off of my experiences as a firearms instructor, I’d say that maybe three out of a hundred gun owners actually pay for a firearms training class that’s not mandated by law like some states require for a CCW license. Maybe one out of those three will take more than one class.

I have read this defeatist claptrap before. The problem with such a scheme is that if it were viable, it would already have been tried. It’s all nonsense. People will have the sense to understand that whatever such games may be played, it is still a declaration of war. Those who try to implement it will be killed anyway. In fact more such people will be killed than with the old SWAT tactic, because it is hard to take a SWAT team out when you are waking up at 3AM with a flash-bang in the bedroom. It’s much easier to knock a lone, offensive bureaucrat off. People will simply lie when they do the certification you speak of, or simply do without the license that requires it. No, you have not found the magic formula that tyrants may use to disarm irate and dangerous Americans, sorry. Go back to your friends at Salon.