How About Regulating Ammunition Instead?
The United States has a major problem when it comes to gun violence in comparison to other so-called industrialized nations [1]. Yet in spite of this fact, political partisanship has long impeded attempts to address this violence meaningfully. There may be a way out of this situation, however. Focusing on regulating bullets as opposed to regulating guns would likely not only be more politically amenable, but also more practical.
Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who passed a bill banning “cop killer bullets,’’ famously stated, “guns don’t kill people, bullets do’’ [2]. He also realized that though the Constitution indeed referred to the right to bear arms (specifically, that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”), it said nothing whatsoever about ammunition.
Regulating bullets is not an entirely novel concept. The Gun Control Act of 1968 mandated that all retailers should register ammunition sales and prohibit all mail-order purchases, before being repealed in favor of President Ronald Reagan’s Firearms Owners Protection Act [3]. In addition, according to the Small Arms Survey, there are far fewer producers of ammunition than there are producers of firearms, making the ammunition industry easier to regulate [4].
The following rules and regulations, according to the Giffords Law Center, apply to firearms in the United States but not to ammunition [5].
- Firearm sellers generally need to have licenses and record all transactions.
- Those buying guns from licensed dealers must present ID and pass a background check.
- High volume handgun sales must be regulated, and handgun sales across state lines have to be processed locally.
In fact, most states currently allow buyers to purchase ammunition without a license. There is evidence that requiring buyers to have licenses would reduce gun violence — states that don’t require purchase permits for guns, for instance, are far more likely to be the source of guns used in crimes [6]. States with gun licensing laws in themselves also have less gun violence than those that don’t have said laws [7]. Requiring bullet licensing, instead, could likely achieve the same result without being as onerous to gun rights activists citing the Constitution.
Whereas guns are reusable and can remain usable for a very long time, bullets expire after one use and otherwise only last a few years. Ammunition sales can also now be monitored digitally — bullets can easily be imprinted with traceable serial numbers or microscopic codes, assisting law enforcement in solving gun-related crimes — relatively cheaply, to boot. This data can be registered with the buyer’s personal information at the time of purchase [8].
Homemade guns, though not as frequently used, also exist and the rise of 3D printing has increasingly made it easier to create more of these weapons [9]. The ZIP gun, a makeshift weapon, can reportedly be made from “any number of common household objects.’’ Though said guns have significant flaws (and the printers used to make them are very expensive), they can still prove to be a danger. Making a bullet, however, has so far proven much trickier and far more dangerous: akin to making a bomb [10].
According to John Carnes, a gun enthusiast and engineer, “polymers, or even metal, cannot be 3D printed into gunpowder. The components of gunpowder are easily subject to regulations, and 3D printers don’t produce granulated powder’’ [11]. Endowing 3D guns with the capacity to use standard ammunition or equivalents to the same has also proven incredibly expensive [12].
None of this is to say that gun control is useless. Having fewer guns leads to less gun violence and death in general [13]. Keeping guns out of the hands of those with a record of violence also certainly helps, although the kind of guns they carry isn’t as important [14]. However, the popular interpretation of the Second Amendment presents a massive and seemingly insurmountable obstacle to gun control, and the development of 3D weapons among other issues makes it harder to regulate gun ownership than, say, bullet ownership.
All in all, regulating ammunition not only seems more politically amenable but also more practical than regulating guns. Although there will be some resistance from the gun rights faction to even this idea, the practice of regulating ammunition in itself is far harder to challenge constitutionally. Americans interested in bringing an end to mass gun violence might wish to aim for bullet control over gun control. They can contact their state representatives and spread the word, as well as visit the websites of IANSA and Small Arms Survey for further knowledge.
References:
[1] Santhanam, Laura. “There’s a New Global Ranking Of Gun Deaths. Here’s Where The U.S. Stands.” Stanford Law School. PBS Newshour, August 28, 2018. https://law.stanford.edu/press/theres-a-new-global-ranking-of-gun-deaths-heres-where-the-u-s-stands/.
[2] Moynihan, Daniel Patrick. “Guns Don’t Kill People. Bullets Do.” The New York Times. The New York Times, December 12, 1993. https://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/12/opinion/guns-don-t-kill-people-bullets-do.html.
[3] Waxman, Olivia B. “The Act That Changed America’s Approach to Gun Control Laws.” Time. Time, October 25, 2018. https://time.com/5429002/gun-control-act-history-1968/.
[4] Brauer, Jurgen. “The US Firearms Industry — Production and Supply.” Small Arms Survey, February 2013. http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/F-Working-papers/SAS-WP14-US-Firearms-Industry.pdf.
[5] “Ammunition Regulation.” Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Accessed July 28, 2019. https://lawcenter.giffords.org/gun-laws/policy-areas/hardware-ammunition/ammunition-regulation/.
[6] Pearlstein, Joanna. “If You Want to Stop Gun Violence, Start With Bullets.” Wired. Conde Nast, June 4, 2017. https://www.wired.com/2013/02/ff-bullets-gun-violence/.
[7] Crifasi, Cassandra K., Alexander D. McCourt, and Daniel W. Webster. “The Impact of Handgun Purchaser Licensing on Gun Violence.” Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. Accessed July 29, 2019. https://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-center-for-gun-policy-and-research/_docs/impact-of-handgun-purchaser-licensing.pdf.
[8] Paoli, Giacomo Persi. “Tracing Firearms and Ammunition.” RAND Corporation, September 9, 2016. https://www.rand.org/blog/2016/09/tracing-firearms-and-ammunition.html.
[9] Caron, Christina. “‘Ghost Guns,’ Homemade and Untraceable, Face Growing Scrutiny.” The New York Times. The New York Times, November 27, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/27/us/ghost-guns-gabby-giffords.html.
[10] Bump, Philip. “No, Really, Regulate the Bullets.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, December 17, 2012. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/12/no-really-regulate-the-bullets/266332/.
[11] Carnes, John. “Gun Control Won’t Work, But Ammo Control Could.” The Federalist, June 4, 2014. https://thefederalist.com/2014/06/04/gun-control-wont-work-but-ammo-control-could/.
[12] Frost, Natasha. “Can Ammo Control Stop 3D-Printed Guns?” Quartz. Quartz, September 10, 2018. https://qz.com/1384614/can-ammo-control-stop-3d-printed-guns/.
[13] Donohue, John J., Abhay Aneja, and Kyle D. Weber. “Right‐to‐Carry Laws and Violent Crime: A Comprehensive Assessment Using Panel Data and a State‐Level Synthetic Control Analysis — Donohue — 2019 — Journal of Empirical Legal Studies — Wiley Online Library.” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd (10.1111), May 15, 2019. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jels.12219.
[14] Colarossi, Jessica. “State Gun Laws That Actually Reduce Gun Deaths.” Boston University. The Brink, March 29, 2019. http://www.bu.edu/articles/2019/state-gun-laws-that-reduce-gun-deaths/.
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