So, gun control is still on my mind a bit. I came up with a crackpot idea that could actually work if we had the will as a nation to implement it, but we don't, so it won't. It's actually not all that crackpot. In fact, I'm sure somebody else has come up with it before, but I'm too lazy to do a search. Also, I don't really want to know; whenever I get a good idea and find out that somebody else came up with it first, I get deflated. And with the Internet now, just about every idea is out there in some form or another, so I'm bound to be deflated with any idea I have. Like the time I thought up a crossword puzzle creating algorithm that would try to maximize the "score" of the fill, and then I read this article. Now I find it's usually best just to charge ahead, rather than to see if anybody else has come up with your idea first, because they probably have. Anyway, I digress...
My crackpot gun control idea is to tag all ammunition in some way that makes it traceable to the buyer and seller. You somehow imbed a unique code in a bullet when it's being manufactured. The code couldn't be anything that could be scratched off; it would have to be incredibly hard to remove, so maybe something readable within the bullet, like a microchip, or maybe the material itself could somehow be encode (bullet DNA?). I don't know exactly how we would do it, but I bet somebody out there could figure it out.
Now, any party involved in the production of this bullet -- the manufacturer, retailer, buyer, etc. -- would be linked with the bullet's code, and everything would be kept in a law enforcement database. When a bullet is used in a crime, it's then traced back to the buyer, and if there's no buyer, then it goes to the retailer, so on and so forth, down line, until somebody has to claim responsibility for it. The responsible party is then held liable for allowing their bullet to be used in a crime, and they would have to pay a hefty fine. What this would do is force people to be responsible with their ammunition so that it wouldn't get into the wrong hands as frequently. Responsibility, you know, what the NRA pretends like it wants out of gun owners.
That's the idea. I'll now briefly rebut the objections I foresee.
1. It's not practical. I bet it would be if we actually wanted to do it. Everything is impractical without the desire to make it happen. To bullet coding in particular, with how cheap computer stuff is now, I gotta think the technology is there at a reasonable price. It would raise the cost of ammunition a bit, I'm sure, but that's not a bad thing to me. It's like the "bullet control" joke by Chris Rock's, "if a bullet cost five thousand dollars there would be no more innocent bystanders."
2. Criminals would just use old or illegally made non-coded bullets. Yes, they would. But such bullets would be harder to get. People would hoard the old bullets, knowing they were no longer being produced, and bullets on the black market would be risky to obtain and expensive. Again, this is a good thing. And it wouldn't disadvantage the law-abiding gun owner because they could go to Walmart and buy coded bullets without any hassle.
Also, in general, the criminals-won't-follow-a-law-so-it's-pointless argument is an incredibly weak counter to any potential law. Yes, we know this. By definition criminals won't follow the law. The whole idea is that you can, you know, arrest them when they aren't doing so.
3. I'll be damned if our tyrannical federal government is going to unconstitutionally keep a record on my bullet buying habits. This one I can't really rebut. If people prefer their half-witted, simplistic ideologies to logic and common sense, then they're not going to listen to anything anybody says on any issue, unless it's somebody say something that confirms their half-witted, simplistic ideologies. This is when you just have to hope you can get more people on your side.
Well, that's that. Until next time...
My crackpot gun control idea is to tag all ammunition in some way that makes it traceable to the buyer and seller. You somehow imbed a unique code in a bullet when it's being manufactured. The code couldn't be anything that could be scratched off; it would have to be incredibly hard to remove, so maybe something readable within the bullet, like a microchip, or maybe the material itself could somehow be encode (bullet DNA?). I don't know exactly how we would do it, but I bet somebody out there could figure it out.
Now, any party involved in the production of this bullet -- the manufacturer, retailer, buyer, etc. -- would be linked with the bullet's code, and everything would be kept in a law enforcement database. When a bullet is used in a crime, it's then traced back to the buyer, and if there's no buyer, then it goes to the retailer, so on and so forth, down line, until somebody has to claim responsibility for it. The responsible party is then held liable for allowing their bullet to be used in a crime, and they would have to pay a hefty fine. What this would do is force people to be responsible with their ammunition so that it wouldn't get into the wrong hands as frequently. Responsibility, you know, what the NRA pretends like it wants out of gun owners.
That's the idea. I'll now briefly rebut the objections I foresee.
1. It's not practical. I bet it would be if we actually wanted to do it. Everything is impractical without the desire to make it happen. To bullet coding in particular, with how cheap computer stuff is now, I gotta think the technology is there at a reasonable price. It would raise the cost of ammunition a bit, I'm sure, but that's not a bad thing to me. It's like the "bullet control" joke by Chris Rock's, "if a bullet cost five thousand dollars there would be no more innocent bystanders."
2. Criminals would just use old or illegally made non-coded bullets. Yes, they would. But such bullets would be harder to get. People would hoard the old bullets, knowing they were no longer being produced, and bullets on the black market would be risky to obtain and expensive. Again, this is a good thing. And it wouldn't disadvantage the law-abiding gun owner because they could go to Walmart and buy coded bullets without any hassle.
Also, in general, the criminals-won't-follow-a-law-so-it's-pointless argument is an incredibly weak counter to any potential law. Yes, we know this. By definition criminals won't follow the law. The whole idea is that you can, you know, arrest them when they aren't doing so.
3. I'll be damned if our tyrannical federal government is going to unconstitutionally keep a record on my bullet buying habits. This one I can't really rebut. If people prefer their half-witted, simplistic ideologies to logic and common sense, then they're not going to listen to anything anybody says on any issue, unless it's somebody say something that confirms their half-witted, simplistic ideologies. This is when you just have to hope you can get more people on your side.
Well, that's that. Until next time...
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