John Samuel Tieman: Bullet Control — Toward A Compromise

[Author’s note: Some time after I published an earlier version of this proposal in 1993, I happened to teach a class at Olin-Winchester, an industrial compound on the east side of St. Louis. In case you don’t know, Olin-Winchester is perhaps the largest manufacturer of bullets in this hemisphere. Among other things, they make the 7.62 and the Black Talon. Anyway, I mentioned to a student that I wrote an essay on bullet control. In horror, the student responded, “You wrote that essay!?!?” He then went on to tell me that at various target ranges around the compound — Olin-Winchester is huge — my essay was placed on bulls-eyes and shot to pieces.]

I have a simple solution to our problem with gun violence. Don’t ban the guns. Control the bullets.

A number of years ago here, in my hometown, St. Louis, some young men were playing basketball in a near-by park. The outcome came into dispute, and, as young men are wont to do, they argued. That two of them pushed and shoved was hardly news. What made this fight unusual — or sadly maybe not so unusual — is that one man went home, got a gun, came back and killed the other.

What is striking is that the young killer was in no way different from anyone else who was on that court that day. Young men get angry; young men get into fights; young men get impulsive. (And not always young men, it must be said). And some get guns.

To be absolutely clear and absolutely blunt, I blame the death of this young man directly on the availability of guns. And bullets.

What all sides of the gun-control debate advocate is the control of the criminal use of guns. The collectors do not want to give up prized possessions, a reasonable enough position; and hunters do not want to give up their sport, another reasonable position. On the other hand, control of the criminal use of guns is not possible without the regulation of all guns, something many do not want. Any compromise on gun-control would have to honor the interpretation many have of the 2nd Amendment’s “right of the people to keep and bear Arms”.

I propose a compromise: bullet control. This would honor concerns about gun ownership, while still regulating that ownership’s most deadly effects.

The idea of bullet control is simple enough. Rather than attempting to control the purchase of guns, the local police would control the distribution of bullets. Considering that there is almost one gun for every American, controlling the present possession and future purchase of guns, while in and of itself reasonable, may offer little short-term relief. But to control the distribution of bullets might. Some categories of bullets would be used up rapidly, and all bullets would come into short supply eventually. For those who are worried about home defense, I suggest a yappy schnauzer.

Under this plan, all bullets would be in the hands of the local police. To obtain bullets, a registered gun owner would have to go to the police, purchase the bullets, then leave them at the precinct until the person wants to use them.

Admittedly, this is not a perfect solution. My brother-in-law made his own bullets. My wife and I inherited a .38 from my father-in-law. It came with fully functional bullets that are, perhaps, fifty years old. But an imperfect solution is still a start.

Perhaps what is needed, more than anything else, is to begin with the simply admission, on the part of the federal government, that something must be done about guns. The nation simply can’t go on like this. According to the Brady Campaign, the U.S. firearm homicide rate is 20 times higher than the combined rates of 22 countries that are our peers in wealth and population. On a more personal note, one in three people in the U.S. know someone who has been shot. The Brady Commission also notes that a gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used to kill or injure in a domestic homicide, suicide, or unintentional shooting than to be used in self-defense. Every single day, an average of 55 people kill themselves with a firearm. On that same day, 46 people are shot or killed in an accident with a gun. And if that is not enough, on yet that very same day, an average of 31 Americans are murdered with guns, and 151 are treated for a gun assault in an emergency room.

Beyond the frank admission that this is a national problem, we need, to put it simply, legislative action. Bullet control is not a perfect solution. It is, however, a simple start.

—

Copyright 2015 John Samuel Tieman