For the people who hate firearms so much, but aren't actively working to ban them, you are the reason firearms aren't banned.

There is a mantra in the firearms community known as the "3% Rule". This is the idea that 3% of the US population would ultimately engage in armed resistance to a tyrannical government in the US, and that that would be enough to eventually bring down the tyrannical government. Now, this may seem like a bunch of insane nonsense, but it really does make a lot of sense.<br><br>In 1776, it was basically 3% of the population who actively took part in the revolution. There were many people who were sympathetic to the cause, but only about 3% of the population took part in the armed resistance.<br><br>Now, let's fast forward to today. In 2012, the federal government had ~700,000 full time employees who were in charge of enforcing federal laws. Now, obviously not all of these employees would join an armed resistance, and not all of them would be actively working against the resistance. But, let's say that about half of them, or about 350,000 employees would be against an armed resistance, and about 175,000 people who would join an armed resistance against a tyrannical government in the US (Half of half).<br><br>For context, during the height of the war in Vietnam, the US had about 540,000 troops deployed. Well, I'm sure you've heard the story of how that turned out.<br><br>Vietnam had a population of about 32 million people. The US has a population of about 332 million people. Therefore, if 3% of the US were to join an armed resistance, that would be about 9.96 million people.<br><br>To put that in perspective, the entire US active military, reserves, and national guard combined only had about 2.5 million members. Of those, about 1 million are on active duty. The entire US military would be outgunned about 5-1 if an armed resistance were to occur.<br><br>To sum up, the reason the US government hasn't already banned firearms is that they don't see a political path forward to do so, and the US military would eventually lose a civil war.<br><br>Least, that's my take on it.<br><br>Edit: typo<br><br>Edit 2: I will never stop being blown away by the sheer amount of people who downvoted this post. The math simply speaks for itself.