How Much Would A "Buy Back" Of Semi-Auto Rifles Cost?

The cost of confiscating semi-auto rifles would
be massive - could the money be better spent?

Cost likely would exceed 2/3 of the US DOJ's yearly budget

The first thing we must recognize is that if the government wants to seize these firearms, they would have to pay for them.  So, setting aside the huge constitutional issues what would such a program cost?

The first step in estimating the cost is estimating the number of such weapons.  The AR15 has been the most popular firearm in the US for a long time.  Then there are AK47s, Ruger Mini-14s and other guns such as the M1 Carbine.  Gun control advocates like to downplay the number of guns involved - while constantly expanding  the kinds of firearms defined as an "assault weapons".  No one knows how many semi-auto rifles exist that take detachable magazines are out there - but they have been made for over 100 years.  A realistic estimate would be 30-40 million, but it could be even more.

So, if compliance is high, what would such a program cost?  Well, if the average value of these firearms is $600.00 (a conservative estimate), then the math looks like this:

30,000,000 x $600.00 = $18,000,000,000.00

Yep, a realistic estimate of the buy back cost of these firearms is 18 Billion Dollars.  Add on to this the cost of administering the program, running ads to inform the public, disposing of the firearms, defending the law in court and who knows what else - and the cost could easily be over 20 billion dollars. 

For perspective, the entire budget for the U.S. Department of Justice (FBI, US Marshals, ATF, prosecutors, etc.)  is about $31 billion.  Tiny New Zealand's program may cost them 200 million.  After doing my own estimate, I discovered that other researchers have arrived at a similar number (20 billion).  All of this to eliminate a category of firearm that is involved in less murders than knives, clubs and bare hands/feet INDIVIDUALLY.

This raises a logical question: Would this money be better spent on other efforts?  Imagine what we could do with 18 billion dollars.  We could likely harden every school in the country or massively expand mental health services or provide more school resource officers or train school staff to protect their students - or some combination of the above.  

Even if you are a gun control advocate, you should be able to see better ways to spend that much money.  We could  fix our broken background check database so that it actually contains everyone who legally cannot buy or own a firearm.  We could prosecute more people who buy guns illegally.  We could increase funding for the ATF and implement a "Project Exile" like program nationwide.  This program imbeds ATF agents in local police agencies so they can bring federal charges against criminals caught with guns.  Since federal time is usually served far from home, this is a major deterrent that has been proven to greatly reduce the number of criminals carrying guns.  This would save far more lives than buying back millions of semi-auto rifles.

Banning semi-auto rifles is simply not the best way to spend 20 billion dollars if you want to save lives.  There are many other efforts that would be much more effective.