Alan Jacobs

The lat­est and in this case par­tic­u­larly heart–rend­ing mass killing has re-ignited the gun con­trol debate. Though I own a shot­gun and enjoy tar­get shoot­ing and the occa­sional hunt­ing trip, we have to do some­thing about a sit­u­a­tion in which any mad­man with a gun can load up with thou­sands of bul­lets. Yes, guns don’t kill peo­ple peo­ple kill peo­ple, but guns make it WAY eas­ier, and huge mag­a­zines full of cheap bul­lets make it eas­ier still.

So, a sim­ple propo­si­tion: a tax on bul­lets. The right to bear arms is enshrined in the Con­sti­tu­tion, but gun vio­lence imposes extremely high costs on soci­ety. A stiff tax on bul­lets would make is harder to casu­ally acquire enough bul­lets to kill 20 six year olds. A box of .223 rounds, the kind used to kill chil­dren at Sandy Hook, can be bought online for $9. Let’s quadru­ple that price.