I remember a sarcasm from the 1960s or 1970s: "Guns don´t kill people; Bullets kill people." This was in reaction to the gun lobby´s slogan of the time: "Guns don´t kill people; People kill people." We´ll see your absurdity and raise you one.
Now I do believe the best way to approach the issue of our out-of-control gun culture is to recognize the truth of that sarcasm. Even if the sale of guns were outlawed tomorrow, the country and culture are permeated with guns that would still be there. There have been some successful buy-back programs, but that is never going to really go anywhere.
I think there are a number of promising things we can do in the realm of controlling access to ammunition. As things are now you can go on line and purchase any ammo, any type of clip with nothing more than a credit card. I saw that you (or your teenager using your credit card) can buy a clip with 30 rounds for $8.99. Don´t ask me what calibre etc. It´s not germane. That needs to stop; ammunition should be difficult to buy. And it should be expensive as hell.
Supposedly there are gun clubs and places where gun owners can practice. These places could have access to ammunition at today´s cheap prices for sale to their members/customers. BUT these organizations would be responsible, with very severe penalties, for ensuring that all of the ammo they sell is used on their premises. In other words, gun owners can practice or shoot for sport at a minimum cost.
Gun owners say they believe guns make their lives and property more safe and secure. I don´t believe it, but let it be. If they want to have weapons on hand for defense of their castle and person, they shouldn´t mind paying an extremely high price for the bullets that make that possible.
I understand that bullets, as opposed to guns, actually have a shelf life, so castle defenders would periodically have to buy new ammunition. Perhaps we could let them have it at a lesser price as long as they turned in their unused, but out-of-date rounds.
Perhaps we could even require that manufacturers make shell casings be identifiable and traceable. Without a doubt, it is possible. How much it would add to the cost, I have no idea.
At any rate, I think the future of gun control is really ammunition control, because the guns themselves are already out of control and there is nothing much we can do about it.
The sarcastic hipsters had it right. It´s bullets that kill people and we can do something about that.
2 comments:
I'm going to have to think about your proposal a bit, but you might be on a correct path. One of the things that I like about your approach is that it takes advantage of the way our economy and our society works right now; attention is paid to money.
Along those same lines, the more I think about it, I really like the idea you proposed about people who own guns being held responsible. Again, it uses the strings and the levers already in place in our society--the cost of insurance, particularly liability insurance really, really speaks loudly. Yes, it can be misused, as it is in the process of making our medical care so expensive, but it has made vicious dog owners a bit wary. It is too bad that Warren Buffett will be the real beneficiary since his financial genius has been to buy insurance companies and they will prosper greatly with the new laws.
I fear that the new laws will be as ineffective as the old. And it is nearly certain there will be new laws. I don't hear anyone in the political realm talking about the reasons for the decline in murder in the US and whether there are lessons that could be learned to apply to these type crimes. The fact that violent crime has declined greatly but these crimes have become more numerous should be part of the discussion? How about the fact that they nearly always (the Giffords shooting the only notable exception?) occur in a Gun-Free Zone?
Another thing that is not part of the discussion is mental health care. Since the Kennedy administration passed the Community Mental Health Act in 1963, the psychotic population has been turned out, literally, on the streets. The persistent support of "rights" on the part of many and certainly the ACLU have made it difficult to compel mental health patients to submit to treatment, and psychotics are not good outpatients. Just go to the streets of San Francisco (or Norfolk, Nebraska for that matter) to witness that. The only place left are prisons, where many end up.
These privacy issues also prohibit the transfer of knowledge about potentially dangerous people. That matter, the privacy one, is a really slippery slope that is open to abuse by "the government" and currently being terribly abused by our volutary offering of personal information on the internet for anyone to misuse.
Your comments and those of many others seem to indicate that the people who legally obtain and own guns are the problem. After all, the West Virginia shooter Cho, Jared Loughner, Naeem Davis, Adam Lanza, the guy in Sweden are not able to buy weapons under current laws. What will new laws do to prevent others like them, unable to buy guns or obtain them legally right now, from getting and using them?
My guess is that the new laws will not deal with much of that, but keep an eye on them as they will offer a way to make a boat load of money by catering to the requirements. Hope your pension account buys ammo companies or liability insurance companies.
definitely
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