2 ms·

I think Chris Rock has the right idea. Smack a MASSIVE tax on ammunition. Make illegal ammunition a BIG crime. I'm talking ammo should be $50/bullet. "I've go

I think Chris Rock has the right idea. Smack a MASSIVE tax on ammunition. Make illegal ammunition a BIG crime. I'm talking ammo should be $50/bullet. "I've got that bullet on layaway, as soon as I pay it off, you're dead MF'er!"

mc32 4y ago
Ammo isn't hard to make (or smuggle in). If you tax it massively, there will be a black market for it. We see that with Tobacco and Marijuana --both of which have legal options with medium taxes and illegal but no taxes.
- asdff 4y ago
  There will always be a black market for it, but making it harder to get means these crimes are overall less likely to occur. Consider the Monterey Park shooting. The killer used a gun they bought legally and was granfathered in, and shot ammo they also bought legally, to commit a crime of passion in the moment. This wasn't some criminal tapped into the underworld who would be able to source black market ammo. This was a pretty boring 73 year old man who bought it from the store. Take out that access to these weapons, and that crime would not have occurred in that manner. That being said, most gun violence in this country isn't of a mass shooting or a organized crime nature. Most deaths from guns are suicides. Half of all intimate partner homicides are from a gun. Just from having a gun present in the home, a women in an abusive relationship is now 5x more likely to be murdered. These aren't cases where people seek out illegal arms dealers, they happen because the gun is in easy access. There's a reason why this country faces so much gun violence compared to countries that have more sensible positions on gun ownership, and its because of the ease of legal access.
- AtlasBarfed 4y ago
  Go ahead and black market it. I get that. But guns... don't blow up. Ammo does. It's not reusable. If you ban guns, you can't get the existing ones to go away, but a gun is useless without ammo, and even if they hoard it, it will either be locked away as precious, not used, or if used, the supply goes down. Responsible owners won't want to use their guns. So they exist for home defense. For hunters, well, is shooting a deer worth $50 per shot? We'll see, but it doesn't preclude the sport entirely. Better be a better shot :-) And if you black market the ammo, it's yet another legal exposure for criminals and criminal organizations. So as flippant as the joke is, I think it has potential. Now for shooting ranges, that's tough. Maybe allow the ammo to only stay at a shooting range, but any ammo carrier outside of the shooting range is the same: very illegal. Maybe there can shooting range ammo that is far less effective (rubber bullets or even less lethal) that will still allow target practice.

mc32 4y ago

Ammo isn't hard to make (or smuggle in). If you tax it massively, there will be a black market for it. We see that with Tobacco and Marijuana --both of which have legal options with medium taxes and illegal but no taxes.

asdff 4y ago
There will always be a black market for it, but making it harder to get means these crimes are overall less likely to occur. Consider the Monterey Park shooting. The killer used a gun they bought legally and was granfathered in, and shot ammo they also bought legally, to commit a crime of passion in the moment. This wasn't some criminal tapped into the underworld who would be able to source black market ammo. This was a pretty boring 73 year old man who bought it from the store. Take out that access to these weapons, and that crime would not have occurred in that manner. That being said, most gun violence in this country isn't of a mass shooting or a organized crime nature. Most deaths from guns are suicides. Half of all intimate partner homicides are from a gun. Just from having a gun present in the home, a women in an abusive relationship is now 5x more likely to be murdered. These aren't cases where people seek out illegal arms dealers, they happen because the gun is in easy access. There's a reason why this country faces so much gun violence compared to countries that have more sensible positions on gun ownership, and its because of the ease of legal access.
AtlasBarfed 4y ago
Go ahead and black market it. I get that. But guns... don't blow up. Ammo does. It's not reusable. If you ban guns, you can't get the existing ones to go away, but a gun is useless without ammo, and even if they hoard it, it will either be locked away as precious, not used, or if used, the supply goes down. Responsible owners won't want to use their guns. So they exist for home defense. For hunters, well, is shooting a deer worth $50 per shot? We'll see, but it doesn't preclude the sport entirely. Better be a better shot :-) And if you black market the ammo, it's yet another legal exposure for criminals and criminal organizations. So as flippant as the joke is, I think it has potential. Now for shooting ranges, that's tough. Maybe allow the ammo to only stay at a shooting range, but any ammo carrier outside of the shooting range is the same: very illegal. Maybe there can shooting range ammo that is far less effective (rubber bullets or even less lethal) that will still allow target practice.