
"Gun" "Control" - japaget
http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/16/gun-control/
======
erickhill
As found in the NY Times today regarding this subject:

"In Australia in 1996, a mass killing of 35 people galvanized the nation’s
conservative prime minister to ban certain rapid-fire long guns. The “national
firearms agreement,” as it was known, led to the buyback of 650,000 guns and
to tighter rules for licensing and safe storage of those remaining in public
hands.

The law did not end gun ownership in Australia. It reduced the number of
firearms in private hands by one-fifth, and they were the kinds most likely to
be used in mass shootings.

In the 18 years before the law, Australia suffered 13 mass shootings — but not
one in the 14 years after the law took full effect. The murder rate with
firearms has dropped by more than 40 percent".

It was legislation, intelligent legislation, that worked. It did not advocate
the complete abolishment of firearms, which many pro-gun advocates seem to be
making the mental leap towards when any discussion of gun "rights" is brought
up. Thinking this problem isn't partially-solvable is ignorant.

~~~
harshreality
People can use any weapons they want in mass attacks.

Cho (the VA Tech shooter) used two handguns, no long guns at all, and that
attack was more lethal. [1]

The Monash University shooting (7 people hit) doesn't count as an Austrialian
mass shooting? It took place in 2002, after the new Australian law. [2]

Finally, I'm sorry to say this and I know it gets old, but the U.S.
constitution identifies a right to keep and bear arms. Even if the arguments
in favor of banning guns were convincing, you can't maintain respect for the
constitution or the rule of law while enacting laws that violate the
constitution.

The proximal reason for this event was the killer's mother, who it seems drove
him insane with her paranoid end-of-the-world mentality.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seung-Hui_Cho#Weapons>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monash_University_shooting>

~~~
brianchu
This is actually an effective argument for _comprehensive_ gun control. An
assault weapons ban would not prevent those two mass killings you cite. But,
however, having a comprehensive system where, for example, mental health
records are tied to gun purchase background checks would have prevented Seung-
Hui Cho from purchasing handguns.

Gun control is not just one policy. It's a broad policy with many possible
facets: an assault weapons ban, federal standards for background checks,
cracking down on sales at gun shows, eliminating loopholes, tying mental
health records to background checks, the list goes on.

EDITS (reply to below, additional things constantly added):

I'm not naive enough to say that comprehensive gun control is going to
eliminate all gun violence. I'm saying that it's a step forwards towards
reducing gun violence.

>We arguably have comprehensive drug control. How well does that work?

This is a non sequitur. Just because the drug war has failed and the phrase
"comprehensive drug control" shares two words with the phrase "comprehensive
gun control" is not enough to logically lead to the conclusion that gun
control is/will be a failure. The comparison needs to be elaborated. Let me
elaborate on a few differences: people don't get addicted to guns like they do
with drugs, someone using a drug can not directly physically injure someone
else, drugs are much smaller and easier to hide (EDIT: for smuggling on an
individual basis, not for a cartel), guns are hard to mass produce without
people noticing. Drunk driving is not really relevant unless there is a large
trend of accidents caused by cocaine/heroin/marijuana (rather than just
alcohol). Guns are much less profitable for cartels than drugs are (for
reasons of addiction).

I think nitpicking over the specifics of an assault weapons ban does not
really counter my point. I meant semi-automatic weapons with
magazines/cartridges (and automatic weapons). Even if my definition misses
something, I'd be willing to just concede that and expand my definition. Yes,
it's obvious that a ban implemented today would not stop Adam Lanza, because
the guns are already bought. It might reduce the number of deaths of an Adam
Lanza 5 years from now (I'm acknowledging of course that he also had two
handguns with him).

To be clear, I don't propose that we should have a blanket handgun ban. It's
simply not a realistic goal (politically and in terms of all the guns already
out there). There are ways to improve gun control without banning all
handguns.

I also think that the mental health system in America is broken and needs
fixing. The two things are not mutually exclusive.

~~~
csense
How would you deal with the stockpiles built up by career criminals and people
who actually believe in the Constitution? (Of course, _comprehensive_ gun
control would legislatively unify these two categories.)

We arguably have _comprehensive_ drug control. How well does that work?

~~~
lbarrow
I don't understand why you think that criminal record checks, mental health
checks, etc. would make people who own guns into "career criminals".

As brianchu pointed out, the Virginia tech shooter was involuntarily detained
because of mental illness about 15 months before he bought his guns. He then
killed 32 people with them. Would prohibiting a law prohibiting people like
Seung-Hui Cho from buying guns for a few years really be a step along the road
to tyranny?

~~~
harshreality
More to the point, how is it that 15 months after being involuntarily
committed Cho was _worse_ than he started? That sounds a lot more like a
failure of the mental health system than a lack of proper gun control.

The anti-gun myth implicitly assumes that if you have someone who, given
access to guns, would shoot a bunch of people, but you take those guns away,
that person suddenly becomes harmless. I don't want anyone like that walking
around free in society; I don't want them buying guns, and I don't want them
driving cars or buying anything at hardware stores or pool supply stores.
They're a clear danger to themselves and to others. However, I'm not going to
support gun control measures just because the mental health system isn't
perfect.

Adding regulations that restrict what free people can do or buy based on their
past history doesn't tend to be very effective. Ex-cons who are disqualified
from owning guns, and who cannot buy them legally, have no trouble acquiring
firearms through other means.

~~~
tsotha
>More to the point, how is it that 15 months after being involuntarily
committed Cho was worse than he started? That sounds a lot more like a failure
of the mental health system than a lack of proper gun control.

Treatment for mental problems isn't an exact science. It may be that he would
have been worse had he not been committed. Personally I don't want more
restrictions on guns, but I find the argument that the mental health system is
the point of failure in these kinds of crimes to be pretty unpersuasive.

------
DigitalSea
The failed drug war has taught us you can regulate and draft laws until it's
illegal to even think about making a gun let alone get a hold of one without
the appropriate credentials, but it won't change a thing at the end of the
day. While it can be argued that we might see people printing their own guns
in the future when 3D printing becomes affordable, what's stopping people from
printing knives and other sharp pointy objects that could be used to kill or
maim someone else? If someone wants to get hold of a gun, they will and no
amount of laws or enforcement will ever change that. If someone doesn't get
hold of a printed weapon, they'll get their hands on a legitimately made metal
one (or whatever material it is they build guns out of these days).

The benefit of 3D printing is that at least you have a better chance tracing a
home printed weapon than you would an illegally purchased street firearm with
no serial number.

~~~
sliverstorm
_The failed drug war..._

I find it particularly amusing that many of the people I hear calling for the
legalization of all drugs on the grounds that banning them doesn't work, are
the same people calling for the outlawing of all guns.

~~~
Daishiman
Except that gun control laws can actually be extremely effective, and the same
cannot be said for drug prohibition.

And, honestly, there is nontrivial difference the ability to consume certain
substances and owning instruments made explicitly to kill.

~~~
jessedhillon
Additionally, there is a very good argument for being free to take substances
which release/alter your voluntary control of self. What are the arguments to
own any gun? Imaginary civil war, fantasy home defense, pride of ownership,
and practicing marksmanship? For this, we have to suffer the fact that any
crazy can buy push-button killing machines, or that any sane owner thereof can
subsequently lose his shit and kill the rest of us?

There doesn't seem to be much of an upside for the rest of us.

~~~
sliverstorm
Some folks hunt as a way to put protein on the table.

~~~
jessedhillon
Yep. A long-barreled rifle, of small-ish calibre (.223 maybe) and with a fixed
5-shot magazine should be good enough for them. A determined person can hold
up a mini-mart with that, but he'll be much less effective if he tries to go
on a spree. Any features you add to such a weapon are, essentially, for the
purposes of increasing its lethality to humans.

~~~
sliverstorm
You've jumped from "What are the arguments to own _any_ gun" implying 'No
guns' to 'Some guns are ok but not others'. Which is actually your belief?

~~~
jessedhillon
It's a good point. I actually would advocate no guns, but I could find it
acceptable to compromise with hunting rifles only. But still, apart from
hunting rifles then, what are the arguments to own _any_ gun?

~~~
sliverstorm
Hunting, recreation, self defense, home defense. Those are the main arguments
I know. This generally corresponds to rifles/shotguns, plinking/antique guns,
handguns, and shotguns/handguns respectively.

It's also sort of in the roots of the country, so you could say it's sort of
patriotic to own a gun and train yourself in its use, but that is of course
not a cold, practical argument.

Note: "Self defense" may have raised eyebrows; in particular, I am referring
to people like judges and police officers who handle violent criminals.
Typically these people are allowed to carry just about anywhere even off-duty.

Note2: In case you aren't actually aware, shotguns are commonly used for
hunting, typically for small game and birds.

Note3: Skeet shooting is an Olympic sport. :)

~~~
jessedhillon
I would like to see some numbers for the home defense case -- it seems that
the reasoning is mostly based on common sensical intuitions. IIRC guns in the
home are multiple times more likely to be used against the family, than
against an intruder. Permitted law-enforcement use is also acceptable to me.

Everything else you mentioned can, I think, be narrowly compromised on -- for
shotguns, we can have single or double-barreled breechloaders only, 20 gauge
only. That is plenty lethal, and the freedom to own pump-loading and larger
gauges are, I think, acceptable casualties.

I think there really is not a fact-based case for the civilian ownership of
the majority of weapons designed and sold in the market. Why does anyone need
a Bushmaster or knockoff AK?

~~~
sliverstorm
I'm not a big proponent of guns as home defense, I was just listing the
arguments as you asked for them.

As for shotguns, while I'm partial to breech loaders, I imagine pump-loaders
would be nice when bird hunting- you have literally seconds to take your
shots. 12 gauge is popular for hunting, particularly when using a shotgun as a
poor man's deer rifle (buckshot or slugs). Anyway, don't worry about shotguns
so much. They aren't used much in crime, and I gather they are pretty
survivable at all but very close range.

If you want to save lives, forget shotguns, forget rifles, forget even assault
rifles- while mass shootings are big news, from a pure numbers point of view
handguns are the biggest nail to pound down. More people in rural California
in 2010 were killed with handguns than the count for the Connecticut shooting:

[http://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/pdfs/publications/Firearms...](http://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/pdfs/publications/Firearms_Report_10.pdf)

It's actually quite an interesting document if we're comparing types of
firearms.

------
littlegiantcap
This just amplifies the fact that the conversation shouldn't be about gun
control and should be about mental health.

~~~
DigitalSea
The article is about the impending 3D printing revolution and being able to
print your own guns, not gun control in itself. I don't see how mental health
relates to printing 3D guns at home.

~~~
csense
It relates indirectly.

Two things were necessary for the latest school tragedy to occur: The shooter
had to be mentally ill, and he had to have access to the gun(s) he used.

Let's suppose a significant fraction of gun-related crimes contain these two
elements, and it would be worthwhile to make a political push for the
prevention of this specific subset. (Not to imply that any other subset of
gun-related crimes is unworthy of attention.)

The obvious way to attack this class of crimes would be to remove either
mental illness or access to weapons from the equation.

The article seems to be saying that denying people access to guns will become
much more difficult in the next few years as new technology will make it much
easier to people to manufacture them privately and inexpensively.

This implies that policy efforts in that direction will likely end up wasted,
and we should instead focus on removing mental illness from the equation
(presumably by increasing research to create new treatments, improving access
to mental health services to do a better job of bringing existing treatments
to people who need them, and reducing bureaucracy and waste).

~~~
joesb
But the article did not talk about the latest school tragedy. It talked about
gun control in general, including using gun to commit crime like, for example,
robbing a bank.

~~~
csense
We've moved on from discussing the content of the article's content to how the
article provides an essential link in a particular chain of reasoning about
the best way to address a specific subset of gun violence.

This process is called "discussion." To me, comments that merely restate the
article's content without any additional information or commentary are noise;
if I want to know what the article said, I can read it directly, and I
probably already did if I'm reading (much less writing) comments.

------
smsm42
Printing guns is curious, but irrelevant for the stated purpose - "gun"
"control". Various resistance movements mass-produced guns under Nazi regime.
If the regime as brutal as Nazis was unable to prevent it in 1940s, how much
chance any modern democracy has to prevent it in 2010s and beyond?

Obviously the point is not to completely eliminate guns, that is too stupid
even for public politics. The point is to scare the average citizen so much
and to distance them so much from the guns that if he wants to commit a crime,
he would be too scared of the guns to find one, and others around him would be
too scared of the guns too much to provide it for him. We can see that works
well because the same works quite well with drugs, which are not available to
ordinary citizens and only available to hardened criminals via their
underground criminal networks. Oh wait, that's wrong - anybody who cares knows
where to get some pot, and anybody who cares enough knows where to get
stronger stuff - or knows somebody who does. However, for some reason people
think with guns it would work differently. Even though making a primitive gun
takes only basic knowledge in material working and basic metalworking tools
sold in any hardware shop and all over the internet. Of course, you may go the
way of the drugs and severely restrict even basic chemicals and tools under
the pretense they could be (and are) used to manufacture drugs. And you'd end
up exactly the same place as with drugs - nowhere. With only exception that
drugs are consumable and guns can be bought once and remains with you - so
you'd need much less production capacity to reach the same level of
saturation.

------
robomartin
CAN SOMONE PLEASE KILL-OFF THIS THREAD BEFORE HN BECOMES ANOTHER HOME FOR
LOONIES? JUST MAKE IT GO AWAY.

I am an American. I don't own any guns. I have lived in other parts of the
world, sometimes under military regimes. I have never --EVER-- felt the need
to own firearms in order to feel secure, protect my family or defend myself
from a rogue government.

I do enjoy an occasional trip to the shooting range where we rent the weapons
and have a good time shooting at metal targets or clay pigeons. Then I go home
and that crap stays behind. I don't need it. I know with 100% certainty that
none of my kids will ever have an accident in my home with a firearm 'cause
there isn't one to be found.

I don't have any particular issue with the idea of people owning guns.
Artillery and mass-killing weapons are a different story. There have to be
sensible limits and strict rules. I don't know what these limits and rules
might be. There are experts who have studied this far and deep. I'll defer to
them.

To be sure, there's a mental health issue that must be dealt with as well.
Don't know the answers.

Still, I think this thread needs to be shut-down before the nut-cases who
think they are going to have to defend their homes from hordes of their own
neighbors after each power outage take over.

~~~
temphn
> I have never felt the need to own firearms in order to feel secure

robomartin: I enjoy many of your posts and understand where you're coming
from. Regarding this point, however, if you saw videos of Koreatown during the
LA Riots, or in New Orleans after Katrina, or of Vancouver or London recently,
you saw video of real times - in industrialized society - where the police
were absent and law & order broke down.

The Koreans with guns defended their stores against rioting looters. That
happened in America. It happened to the parents of people I know.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmsKGhLdZuQ>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmQW6xLECUU>

I hope you'd agree then that you don't have to be a "nut case" to imagine you
need to defend your family, property, and loved ones from fellow Americans in
the event of riots. It's happened, multiple times, as the clips above show.

~~~
robomartin
I'll grant you that there might be circumstances under which one has to be
able to defend self and loved ones. And it isn't my intent to suggest that
guns ought to be taken away from people. The vast majority of gun owners
wouldn't hurt a fly.

With regards to riots and stores being looted. On the side of the store owner,
he or she should have insurance for that. I would not want to shoot someone
for stealing from my store. I am not sure the law justifies that. I am not
sure that I can morally justify it regardless of the law.

The deeper problem is societal. Was there any looting in Japan after the
tsunami. Nope. Why? Different culture. Different behavioral patterns. What is
it about our society and what we teach kids and people that would lead them to
equate a natural disaster or a little civil unrest with the idea of taking and
destroying other's property? Don't know.

The issue that is touching a nerve today with this horrific tragedy is that
guns are simply too available or they are being sold to people who should not
have them. I am speaking as someone who has zero problems with the concept of
gun ownership. That said, as a father, I'll be damned if I'll choose gun
ownership over my kids right to be safe at school or at the mall. That's not a
tough decision to make at all.

I'm a numbers guy and I know full-well that the statistics found at reputable
sources such as the CDC or FBI show that deaths due to guns almost pale in
comparison to other causes of death, particularly when combined. The same
Hollywood actors who pull at the heart-strings and stand for gun control after
a disaster such as Newtown go and get drunk at parties and don't express
outrage for the fact that drunk drivers kill ten times as many kids per year
as guns do. It's unfortunate but true. And, I do get it. Considering that
there are about 350 million guns in the US it is easy to conclude that the
vast majority of them are absolutely harmless.

When you look at what happened in Newtown you have to wonder how and why these
guns got into this household. By all reports this kid had very serious issues.
I don't know how one would do this, but these guns shouldn't have been
available to him and perhaps even his mother. It is horrific and there is no
pro-gun argument that can stand a chance against the brutal death of a child
in this manner.

When I go to the shooting range I am sometimes in awe of the weapons I see
there. Some guys show up with stuff that looks just amazing. As an engineer I
appreciate the tech. But sometimes I think that these guys could go from
harmless-hobbyist to mass murderer in a second if a single bit flipped in
their brains. I have fired AR-type weapons rented at the range. They are a
blast. But they are also nasty-deadly. These are tools built for rapid killing
and almost nothing else. Same with semi-auto handguns that can squeeze-off
rounds as fast as you can pull the trigger. Do we really need to own these
things to defend our homes? Are we going to be invaded by hordes of armed
thugs?

Shotguns are a different story. Particularly breach-loaded shotguns. Here you
have a particularly intimidating self-defense (and hunting) weapon that is a
lot harder to use for mass murder. One or two shots and a good pause to
reload. I can't see someone justifying needing an AR for self-defense vs. a
shotgun. If you take any of these mass shootings and substitute whatever
weapons they used with breech-loaded shotguns I guarantee you that the
outcomes would have been very, very different. People at least have a chance
to overtake the shooter.

This is a complicated issue for sure. It becomes far less complicated when you
have parents in fear of their kids being mowed-down with semi-automatic
weapons. Today, that is a potential reality anywhere in the US where you
combine these kinds of weapons with a lunatic. The NRA and gun lobbies need to
tread lightly here because, today, there isn't a single parent who would not
support a vote for serious gun control --even if irrational-- at some level.

And, yes, the nut-jobs need to keep their mouth's shut. Your right to own a
gun doesn't stand a chance against my kids' right to not get shot in school,
at the mall or in the movie theater.

------
yk
I see two problems with the article:

1\. For the foreseeable future there will be no 3D printer which can print
explosives. Therefore it seems hard to actually print ammunition.

2\. Guns have rather many parts which are under high mechanical stress.
Therefore 3D printable gun designs will be rather crappy for quite some time.

Both of these points render the problem of 3D printable weapons rather smaller
than the control of carbines.

~~~
rdl
The hard part of all of this is primers. Virtually everything else is
straightforward (propellant is hard, but not as hard as primers. Reloading
from infinite primers and powder is essentially something a one-armed blind
person can do with a reloading press.

Most of the parts of guns are not under much mechanical stress, and the parts
which are, tend to not be the regulated items. A convicted felon could buy
commercially made barrels all day long (they're not firearms or in any way
controlled), which are probably the firearm part with the greatest difficulty
of manufacture, along with springs.

~~~
yk
Of course, one can manufacture a gun from a 3D printer plus some additional
stuff. But there is a qualitative difference between 'click print' and you get
everything you need and a project to get everything you need to build a gun,
which utilizes a 3D printer ( and some chemistry and some additional
metalwork). After all, it is today possible to manufacture a (completely
unregistered) gun yourself utilizing a CNC cutter and some craftsmanship.

------
gioele
Fact checking of some assumption of existence.

* «MPEG 3»: Yeah, sure.

* «We can print working guns right now»: No, you cannot, neither you will be able in the foreseeable. Please prove otherwise.

~~~
andrewflnr
He did. Six shots is merely an unreliable gun, not, fundamentally, a non-
functional gun (see also the point about 6-vs-100 shots and 0-vs-1 shot), and
frankly, an AR-15 seems unnecessarily ambitious for a proof-of-concept. They
probably would have gotten better results with something better suited for
printing; I bet AK's print better. AFAICT, it's just a matter of sufficient
precision with sufficiently strong materials.

~~~
angersock
Well, in case anyone's curious:

<http://www.lasc.us/SAAMIMaxPressure.htm>

[http://www.matbase.com/material/polymers/commodity/abs-
gener...](http://www.matbase.com/material/polymers/commodity/abs-general-
purpose/properties)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylinder_stresses>

That's a start, anyways.

------
DanielN
related hn discussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3019163>

------
angersock
Let me point out some interesting issues that are related to this, just so
that we can have something beyond the normal gun/anti-gun rhetoric:

1\. If we legislate 3D printing to prevent weapon manufacture, we run directly
counter to the idea of "Print anything you need at home!". How do we reconcile
these two ideas?

2\. If we want to fingerprint, say, a lower receiver and identify which
machine made it, how would we do so? (My hunch would be looking for
misalignments in the fill pattern, but that's just a first guess).

3\. What sort of technology would be required to automatically detect the
production of a weapon? Could we identify a pressure container, for example,
for use in holding a shotgun shell for firing? Could we distinguish that from
something else?

4\. Taking (3) a step further--this technology could obviously also have
applications in preventing patent infringement. Is it desirable to require
that 3D printers can recognize infringing mechanisms? Why or why not?

~~~
GuiA
wrt to your first point: in the article, they say:

"Will 3D printers refuse to print parts, the way 2D ones are supposed to
refuse to print bills? "

That's an interesting analogy, although the outcomes are not the same (and I
doubt any 2D printer would be capable of duplicating a banknote anyway).

(That being said, I can't find any references to ink printers being unable to
print bills- if anyone has additional info, that'd be very much appreciated!)

~~~
napoleond
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation>

------
pinaceae
guns are not the key here, it is ammunition. chris rock made a great argument
about it, no clue if he re-hashed an old saying or came up with it himself:

make ammo really expensive. make ammo really regulated.

ammo contains explosives. it can be used to build bombs. bombs equal
terrorism. so, get the whole wrath of homeland security upon buying, selling,
handling live ammo upon it. make it so unbelievably complex that people simply
give up.

oh, you want to buy 9mm? sure, please apply for a 9mm cartridge license,
that's forms 12, 3274234, 423-1836, t5 and 0815. process takes a year, is
valid for 5mins and usually ends with you on a no fly list. you don't wanna
know what you need for 5.56. and _selling_? oh boy.

no need to ban anything. bureaucracy was invented for exactly this. crowd
control. just look at how it was applied in the austro-hungarian monarchy,
kafka's process is exactly that.

guns don't kill little kids. bullets do.

~~~
gordaco
I once watched that monologue. He argued that bullets should cost 5k$ to make
killing unaffordable, IIRC.

This raises another point, with regard to the original article: will printing
bullets be easy with 3d printing technology? I may not be as easy (you
probably need to insert manually the powder at some point), but I think it
will eventually happen.

~~~
pinaceae
this is my point - printing the whole thing does not do anything without
adding gunpowder. creating _that_ out of a 3d printer is a bit longer off, re-
arranging molecules is a tad hard.

the US already regulates handling of explosives. simply expand that regulation
to any amount of gunpowder. no need to ban guns, no interference of the
constitution. having a right does not mean that it needs to be easy or cheap.

~~~
learc83
What do you think happens when bullets cost $5000? You've just created a new
revenue stream for drug cartels. Manufacturing ammunition isn't any more
difficult than running a meth lab.

~~~
pinaceae
do you think the black market for ammo would be more like the drug market
rather than the current black market for guns&explosives?

remember, it needs to be hard for mentally unstable kids like the recent one
to get ammo. no one will ever stop someone like Breivik or the Unabomber, who
spent years planning their attacks.

~~~
learc83
I think you underestimate how ingrained guns are in our culture.

If you priced ammunition out of the reach of an ordinary citizen, you've
effectively banned guns for the ordinary citizen.

The first problem you have to deal with is the number of lives that will be
lost in the armed insurrection you've caused. There are thousands of people
just waiting for the government to take their guns and I can guarantee you any
kind of gun ban (even if it's only an effective ban) will cause enough deaths
to offset any drop in murders for the next 50 years or so.

After that's over there is still going to be a large criminal element who
isn't going to stop fighting each other over drugs and will need ammunition to
do it.

> it needs to be hard for mentally unstable kids like the recent one to get
> ammo

How many people die each year to mentally unstable kids as opposed to crimes
committed by hardened criminals usually involving drugs?

If you haven't looked at the statistics, it's _overwhelmingly_ the latter.

~~~
pinaceae
to lay this out more precisely, and I live in Austria, so I have a front row
seat on how to use bureaucracy to steer behavior:

you do not simply raise prices to 5000$. no, you gradually boil the water
through addition of red tape. selling ammo should not be banned, the drug war
shows what happens then. no, it needs to be legal, just amazingly, mind-
numbingly complicated. the cost of the process would then be the markup on the
sale.

make the IRS, TSA, EPA whichever other three-letter agency you can find go all
in and creative on ammo manufacture, sales, distribution. oh boy, the CO2
emissions alone should be fun. and quality standards, only the purest
gunpowder should be approved, FDA-style. to protect the shooters of course,
misfires are bad in your fight against the government - even the NRA can't
deny that.

Call it all the "Make Gun-Owners Safe" act, drop it in front of the
republicans, tie some tax decreases to it. Try voting against that one.

~~~
learc83
>Call it all the "Make Gun-Owners Safe" act, drop it in front of the
republicans, tie some tax decreases to it. Try voting against that one.

Won't happen. There's too much organized resistance against gun regulation.

Besides, something like you're proposing was already tried. The EPA floated
the idea of banning lead bullets, and within hours the mailing lists were
circulating and the attempt was utterly and completely destroyed.

The pendulum has been swinging in the direction of less restrictive gun laws
for the past 20 years or so, even many of my otherwise extremely left wing
friends now own guns, and support gun rights.

