Okay, to be fair, it is possible to kill someone with an unloaded gun, but it sure takes a lot more work. I’d love to see better gun control laws, and I know many of you agree. I keep seeing posts about how we need better gun control regulations in the United States, with the inevitable response of “Yes, that desperately needs to happen, but with the 2nd Amendment, it never will.” Okay, fine. Let’s go with that. As a country, we have a ridiculous number of guns, and they are ridiculously easy to get. You don’t even need to buy one if you have a 3D printer, although printed guns (which would easily pass metal detectors) are apparently pretty flimsy. So...let’s cut the knot. Forget gun regulations and common sense gun laws.
Restrict the ammo instead.
You know what a gun is without ammunition? A blunt object. It isn’t even a particularly good club or throwing object. It’s main power comes from how it MIGHT have ammunition in it. So regulate the ammunition to the hilt.
Yes, there are large existing stockpiles of ammunition. But a bullet, unlike a gun, is a one time use item. We have an utterly insane number of guns in the United States. With gun ownership (arguably) protected by our constitution, even starting to make inroads on reducing civilian gun ownership is going to be a long, hard battle. Meanwhile, every time someone fires a gun, that’s one less bullet that would be sitting around in an ammunition restricted society. In fact, why not make a thing out of it? Instead of a gun buyback program, let’s have an ammo buyback. Let’s have a national use up your ammo day where participating certified shooting ranges host competitions that encourage gun enthusiasts to bring their old ammo and use it up safely.
Yes, the 2nd Amendment has been a major problem with passing sensible gun control laws. The 2nd Amendment says nothing about ammunition. You can keep your guns. But to get ammo, you’re going to need to go through a stringent screening, and deal with getting small amounts of ammo at a time. At the VERY LEAST, it should be harder to get bullets than it currently is to get a gun, alcohol or cough medicine...combined.
Let’s undercut some of the emotional arguments the pro-gun side keeps using. I’m not saying you can’t keep grandpappy’s old gun from WWII. I’m not even saying you have to alter or disable it by removing the firing pin or installing a fingerprint reader. I’m just saying that if it’s only a sentimental item, there’s no need for the gun to be loaded.
So sure, you can collect dozens or hundreds of guns. Have your showy gun display with the poor safety features. But you can only have X many rounds, which must be kept separate from the guns, in an approved ammunition lock box. And furthermore, that ammunition can only be purchased and taken home if you have a current shooting certification for a legally owned weapon of that caliber. Currently owned ammunition could be grandfathered for a while, but once sales restrictions started to settle in, additional rules for grandfathered ammo could be slowly added. Shooting ranges would have more lax ammunition purchase rules, so that you could train, enjoy the sporting aspect of shooting, etc, but that ammo would be purchased and used on site, and subject to large fines if it was taken from the range against rules, and could result in a X amount of time ban on home possession of ammunition.
If school shooters, white supremacists, nutjobs, and your average Good Guy with a Gun could only get a hold of 8 rounds of ammunition, we might be able to return to those good old days where shootings with single digit death tolls were big news. And who knows, after a few decades of people not walking through Walmart with a loaded semi-automatic slung across their back, maybe, just maybe, we could start talking about the radical idea of not toting your gun-shaped security blanket with you everywhere in public. And after a few decades for THAT screaming to die down, if we REALLY wanted to consider radical change, we could maybe start suggesting the concept of actual useful gun restrictions, instead of just ammunition restrictions. But let’s start with reducing the ammunition supply before we start with the hardcore blasphemy, hmm?