This is exactly the sort of active peaceful civil disobedience that is required to overcome the excesses of the gun banning crowd. Public, peaceful, with the clearest possible communication of the message that "we will not comply".
If it should come to pass that the powers that be start actively enforcing these unconstitutional laws the next step will be for everyone charged with an offense to plead not guilty, demand a trial by jury, refuse any negotiated settlement (plea bargain), and simultaneously file federal civil rights lawsuits. If the gun banners push this we need to completely shut down the court system with hearings, trials, appeals, and lawsuits.
Approximately 100 million Americans legally possess approximately 400 million firearms. If only 1 percent refuse to comply, 1,000,000 are arrested and charged, go to trial and appeals, and file civil suits that would amount to hundreds of millions of hours of court time.
There is no jurisdiction in the United States that has excess jail space to house new prisoners. If each person charged refuses to post bail and refuses to accept any terms of pretrial release (service of summons, promise to appear, etc), the authorities will have to start thinking about which offenders to release (misdemeanors, felonies, crimes of violence, bail jumpers, career criminals, etc) in order to jail these people. If each person jailed requires a few doctor's appointments, dental appointments, prescription medications, etc (all at public expense while incarcerated) the expenses will become huge immediately.
If each person charged enters a plea of not guilty and demands a jury trial the courts will be swamped with a wave of hearings and trials. Jury selection alone can take a day or more, during which every other case pending on the court docket must be continued, plea bargained away, or dismissed. Each trial can easily consume a couple of days of the court's time (not to mention pretrial motions hearings, etc), so dozens and dozens of other cases would have to be postponed, settled, or dismissed in order to proceed. Keep in mind that each case must be prosecuted within a legally defined time constraint, so the pressures will build exponentially.
If every person convicted refuses to pay any fines or court costs and refuses to accept any terms of probation, the only alternative is imprisonment. I don't recall hearing of any prisons having much open space; in fact, we read all the time about early releases to deal with prison overcrowding.
If every conviction results in appeal the appellate courts will also become overloaded. Appeals must also be heard within legally defined time constraints. Even when an appeal is not successful there will be another avenue for appeal opened up (state court of appeals, state supreme court, US district court, US court of appeals, US supreme court), and none of these entities is suffering from a lack of workload right now.
A federal civil rights lawsuit in every case would be dealt with in a court system that already sees cases lingering for 3 or 4 years, and only limited ability to hear a fraction of those on the docket. Again, even if unsuccessful there are avenues of appeal up the chain.
Even though lawmakers, prosecutors, and law enforcement officers are usually immune from lawsuits for official acts within the scope of their statutory duties, each official involved can still be sued under a claim of exceeding statutory and constitutional authority. While such lawsuits remain active within the system some of them might find out how difficult it can be to get a mortgage loan, finance a new car, obtain student loans for their kids' educations, and so forth while their credit reports show one or more pending multi-million dollar lawsuits seeking individual judgments.
Now would be a good time for us to begin organizing within each state, setting up funds for legal defense and support of those dragged into the system, negotiating retainers with law firms, perhaps even setting up scholarships for law school students to specialize in 2nd Amendment issues and provide future representation in return for financial support of their educations. No reason why we couldn't have law firms in every state ready, willing, and able to take on every new case and fight it tooth and nail.
A hundred million gun owners should include several million with the means and willingness to contribute a few bucks per month each to build a war chest for the future. Hundreds of businesses now doing millions of transactions annually with firearms enthusiasts could set up a program like the NRA's "round up" with a small amount from each transaction donated into the defense fund (not only would I be willing to do that, I would be willing to donate a bit of each transaction from each transaction as well, perhaps a matching amount of each customer's contribution sort of thing).
The time to move on these things is now, not after the big push of enforcement takes place. In addition to the "I will not comply" message we should be throwing down the gauntlet and publicly announcing that every single case will be defended and litigated to the fullest possible extent. Those who would actively impose such prosecutions need to understand up front that it won't be a simple matter of pitting government agencies against individuals of limited means, but a matter of committing huge amounts of their budgets for each new case brought, and with absolutely no possibility of any return.
Eventually the majority of prosecutors, judges, legislators, and congress critters would be crying "They will not comply and we can't make them".
