The day that there is a nation-wide ban similar to the one in California, half of my gun-nut friends will cross the line into illegal firearms manufacturing, just like people did with booze under prohibition; and like prohibition, the gun act would probably eventually be repealed after several dozen families are murdered in their homes by armed gangs, and there is a rusultant public outcry.
I mean, look at marajuana for example. The government is knocking itself cold trying to stop people around the nation from puffing some weed, and their efforts at enforcement are an abysmal failure. More than anything, more and more people now favor legalization due to the basic cost-benefit reality; It costs more tax-payer money to enforce the ban, than the benefits are worth. I don't want to do drugs, or have my kids around adults who do, but if some stoner wants to light up, what's it matter? As long as something is legal, the government can at least regulate it, and that's better than ruining fairly harmless people's lives with hard time in prison. I can't remember being assaulted by a hardened marajuana addict, or worried about such as thing, just as I've never been assaulted by someone with an AR-15/AK-47, and I'm not worried about that either. Groups like the Brady folks are just playing on fears, not reality. If people were dropping daily in assault rifle shoot-outs across the nation, they might have a point, but they're grasping at outlier statistics that hardly characterize the majority of violent crime.
Personally, I could live with just a Pennsylvania Long Rifle on my wall and a black powder shotgun in the corner, but I'll be sick to death if they outright ban military firearms.
By the time that happens of course (and it will come to pass in my lifetime I'm sure), most of the urban populations in big cities will feel so out of touch with rural gun owners, that we as a group will have very little public support for our interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.
At present, most of the wonderul friends I have want nothing to do with guns, and they're hardly flaming liberals. They simply don't care about guns. They have no beef with gun owners, and no desire to take our guns away, but they won't stop they from being taken away either. Call it political ambivilence.
Personally, I'm just going to use their rhetoric as a good excuse to buy another assault rifle and put it away for times to come.