There are countries with much higher rates of gun ownership than the US with very little crime (Isreal, Switzerland) and countries with much lower gun ownership rates with higher crime (Columbia, Mexico, the UK) Those comparisons are meaningless.

The most telling comparisons are the “before and after” comparisons. What happens to crime rates in states or localities that increase gun control? What happens to them when gun restrictions are relaxed?

In those comparisons, it becomes clear that legal gun ownership rates have very little impact on crime rates. What little impact it does have, tends to be positive, rather than negative.

Your other assertions about crime and causation are equally unsupported by the evidence, but you didn’t cite any to dispute. You simply present conjecture. You’re entitled to your opinions, even if patently wrong and based upon nothing more than assumptions.

As far as the “costs to society” of each bullet…it is easy to vilify something when you only look at one side. Automobiles kill somewhere in the neighborhood of 45,000 Americans every year. Significantly more than guns. Should we ban cars?

No…because the benefits outweigh the costs of those 45,000 deaths and the several hundred thousand injuries that they cause.

Guns are estimated to be used in self defense as many as 2.5 million times per year. What would be the costs if all of those crimes…or even a significant portion of them…were completed because the victims didn’t have the means of self defense?

You also fail to take into account the loss of revenue for the conservation and maintenance of state and national parks and wildlife refuges that are funded partially through excise taxes and fees on firearms, ammunition and equipment.

Finally, you overestimate the difficulty in producing ammunition. You assume that, by taxing official production and sales, that ammunition would become unavailable through other means. Cartridge case technology has existed since since before the Civil War. It is not complex technology. Many amateurs and hobbyists load their own ammunition in their basements or garages. How long do you think it would be before a robust black market ammunition supply appeared? You think the Police would be able to stop it?

Tell me…how difficult is it for those who aren’t overly concerned about the legalities of it to buy illicit drugs? How effective have the police been at stopping anyone from getting ANYTHING that they really want, illegal or not?

You’re living in a fantasy world and the “regulation through taxation” scheme would only affect the law abiding (as usual).

Furthermore, you fail to consider the qualitative impact that such measures would have on law abiding gun owners who fire in self defense. Pricing ammunition at such a point that it is financially unfeasible to shoot for practice would mean that very few people would actually be competent with the firearms that they own for self defense. That would dramatically increase the probability that, if the firearm were used in self defense, they would be ineffective and would place more innocent lives in danger of stray rounds.

Finally, you fail to consider the impact that such measures would have on lawful ammunition producers. Their sales base would dry up overnight…as would their profits. Many would go out of business. The only ones left would be the producers selling to military and police. When demand for a commodity is low and there are a limited number of producers…what happens to prices?

Ammunition costs for law enforcement and the military would go through the roof…even if they were exempted from the exorbitant taxes. This would severely hamper our national security both in the realm of the military and law enforcement.

Finally…Tasers are not a viable alternative to firearms. Police don’t even use them as such. Police use Tasers as an alternative to physical confrontation, not lethal force.

Earlier in the piece you opine that people with firearms won’t have time to use them if attacked…yet you assume that someone with a tazer…with a much shorter range, less accurate and less effective than a firearm…would be able to do so? That makes no sense.

In reality, people defend themselves with firearms every day. Most of those defensive uses don’t make the papers because they don’t result in shots being fired, let alone anyone dying. But even so, there are new examples from across the country posted almost daily on Clayton Cramer’s “Civilian Gun Self Defense Blog”.

Firearms are the great equalizer. They allow a weaker, older, less capable person to defend themselves against a stronger, faster, tougher assailant. Every state that has relaxed gun restrictions in recent history have experienced no increase in violent crime and most have experienced some degree of decrease.

Crime is not caused by the tools available. If guns could be made to magically disappear tomorrow, criminals would simply move on to the next best tool for them to use to ply their trade. Violence and murder ave been a fact of the human condition since Cain and Abel and no amount of regulation of inanimate objects will change that. The best we can do is encourage and enable the law abiding majority to defend themselves against the minority that would prey on them.

It’s true that automobiles kill many people every year, thousands every month. And part of the way we deal with these automobile accidents and that medical costs that they cause is by having drivers pay for insurance. Do you think there should be a bullet insurance?

You mentioned that I failed to consider the taxes lost for state and national parks due to less taxes on ammunition? Please look again because one of my main point was in support of taxes on ammunition. But later you again criticize taxation.

Also you said that I assumed there would be no black market for ammunition. Actually, I said that there would be. But the price of ammunition on the black market would go up as well. Is that a problem, making it more expensive to illegally purchase ammunition? Again you are wrong in claiming that I didn’t consider increases in prices. But I don’t think your doomsday scenario is likely.

The whole point of tasers is that they are nonlethal, an alternative to lethal confrontation. It’s not necessary to kill to protect yourself.

With current knowledge, if I had the choice to move myself and my family in 1900 into Europe, Asia or the USA, I would be foolish to move anywhere but the USA, as Europe and Asia, using the same guns that trouble you so badly in PRIVATE hands, placed the guns in the hands of their governments, who promptly slaughtered HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS using those guns. It is NOT a coincidence that the USA and Switzerland, both countries with a tradition of gun ownership going back centuries, had safe and secure homelands while the rest of the world degenerated in to barbarism and holocaust. No one argues that the USA is a perfect country, and America’s flaws are certainly plain to see, but it beats hands down the alternatives in Europe and Asia when viewed beyond the myopia of the short term. As Churchill once said “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” I think the same idea applies with respect to American gun ownership.