So in the US, we have the right to bear arms. A weapon is an arm. A gun is a weapon. Seems pretty clear right? However, the constitution says nothing about bullets. A few questions about this…
Could bullets be banned? Let’s not say that they would be nationally banned, but maybe lets say on a local level. If in, NYC for example, the Supreme Court say that our handgun ban is unconstitutional, could NYC turn around and say, “okay well then we ban bullets”
Would this be legal? I suppose that one could argue that a gun is not a weapon without bullets and therefore it couldn’t be banned constitutionally.
Let’s say that that is the ruling. What if, one day later, someone decides, “Okay, so we won’t ban bullets, but we’ll tax them to make them very expensive…”
Here I see more areas of dispute. Is it illegal to tax something that is considered a right? It’s not written in the constitution that guns should be cheap use. It’s only written that we have a right to own them. Even if, at some point that the taxes placed on bullets becomes a problem, at what point does it become valid? Surely the government has a right to place some kind of tax on bullets. But where would it end? 100%? 1000%? 1,000,000%?
I personally feel that living in NYC, it’s nice to know that handguns are illegal. I really don’t want to know what will happen here if they overturn the laws banning them. I don’t care what people want to do in other states, but we here in NYC seem to think that it’s a pretty good idea to keep it this way.
Maybe for people like you, which I wouldn’t mind, but what about criminals on the street?
Where would they get gunpowder, etc…? Seems like it’d still have an effect.
Do you think that the gang-banger thug culture would be big on this? Personally I don’t see a problem in hobbyists or hunters lovingly crafted their bullets for their beloved sport.
Also, firing fully automatic would become a pain in the butt.
Someone like, say, me, might see a big opportunity in this. Let’s say I get myself a machine press and a few Dillon progressives and a few friends and start pounding it out in big lots. Once I’m set up for a run it’s easy for me to crank these out in large volumes. So I market them as reloaded ammunition at around 85% of the taxed value and I clean up. Because it’s a private sale that does not require paperwork I cannot be regulated.
So what then, declare a War on Reloading?
All something like this would do is push the economic incentive into a different sector, who will sell a legal product in a legal manner for much less and get around yet another ridiculous restriction.
With regard to fully automatic weapons, they are already stupendously expensive and regulated out the wazoo, so making people reload ammunition won’t be much more of an obstacle, especially if the guy who has the $30,000 Thompson is willing to pay someone to do it for them.
Taxed? Guns and bullets are already taxed by any state that has a sales tax. A firearms permit, where required, always costs some money, which could be considered a “tax.” Nothing unconstitutional there, or at least no court has yet so ruled.
Obviously that isn’t the question BG, the OP is talking about a tax so high as to dissuade any reasonable person from being able to purchase the good.
Like an earlier poster said, do you think a 1,000,000% tax on abortions would fly? Of course not. Or a 1,000,000% tax on software/hardware than can be used to print newspapers? Of course not. These would obviously not be taxes designed to generate revenue (as so few people would ever pay them I doubt they’d generate very much) but to dissuade people from doing something which is perfectly legal.
Merkwurdigliebe you’re living in a dream-state, NYC is chock-full of guns. For some reason people who live in one of the “gun-illegal” cities never can quite understand that their cities are infested with marijuana, heroin, cocaine and et cetera so obviously illicit items are easily trafficked into the municipality and of course this also includes guns. There isn’t a customs office when you drive into New York, you can load up on legally bought guns in Pennsylvania and drive into New York City with them and unless you do something to get pulled over the police would never have a clue. Sort of like people smuggle tons of drugs into and out of New York City every year.
Gun bans in cities like NYC and DC effectively just give the police another means to put “undesirables” away when they can’t catch them committing a more serious crime. To me, I view it as a form of social control. I think a lot of drug laws are liked so much by law enforcement because it allows them to keep people who may not be committing any other crimes but who are “socially undesirable” under control.
Historically, that’s exactly what they are. The Sullivan Act was passed so that the bosses of the political machines could put their enemies away by doing something as simple as planting a gun, or doing other illicit things without fear of opposition from an armed citizen. Other gun control acts are steeped in racism- oh no, mustn’t let the black folk have guns, nosiree. It’s an oft ignored fact.
I love all these backhanded attempts to get rid of guns. Lets outlaw…bullets! Sort of like the prostitution laws in the UK.
If enough people want guns illegal then they will be illegal. Why look for all these obviously underhanded way to thwart the majority of people in the US by finding backdoor ways to make something illegal while not actually MAKING it illegal? Stand up for your convictions…say it straight for gods sake! If you want to try and make guns illegal than fucking try and MAKE GUNS ILLEGAL. Stop all this fucking around, looking for ways to do it under the table.
Attempting to make bullets illegal would pretty much be a joke (as others have already said)…even if you were able to do it coast to coast. All you’d do is make it slightly more annoying for criminal types to get them. Think about it…if they can get CRACK, they can pick up a few freaking bullets at the same source. Make it economically worth the while for criminals to do something and, well, it’s no surprise when they do that.
I don’t know how to manufacture any drugs but making bullets is pretty easy with the right equipment. The right equipment is just a simple press and it doesn’t cost much and they don’t really wear out. The right terms isn’t bullets however. The bullet is the piece of metal that flies out of the barrel. Those are easy to make as well. Lead can be melted on any kitchen stove and then cast by another simple tool. The part that fires is the cartridge. That consist of a brass casing, gunpowder, and and the primer. The brass casing is reusable and they aren’t hard to find at all. Even if all the gunpowder in the world was banned, it isn’t hard to make at all and only takes a few common ingredients. The problem with homemade gunpowder is stability but that may not be a big concern if you just want to score some crack via the cash in your local gas station. I am not sure if you can make homemade primer easily but it is tiny and doesn’t take much. Bullets (cartridges) never really go bad if they are stored properly. You can easily buy and shoot ammo from WWII cheaply in today’s guns with few problems so the existing stock would take a while (decades, maybe a century) to go away on its own.
The guns and cars were manufactured and sold legally in the great majority of cases. If cars were illegal, criminals would have a really hard time stealing them.
This is an old idea. There was an ad campaign when I was a kid “You need bullets like you need a hole in the head.” Bullets are not regulated as tightly as other products. They are explosive, they have huge amounts of lead they are dangerous in fires.
Of course this is a backdoor way of attempting to control gun violence. The example cited above was of a state imposing a harsh tax on abortions.
There is president. In 190-something, Congress passed a huge tax of a penny per hundred on phosphorous-tipped matches as a way of destroying the dangerous industry. (Lot of lung problems in the workers.) the Supremes ruled such a tax OK. Same same for the tax on the transfer of automatic weapons. It is not to raise revenue, but to track and limit automatic weapons.
Such taxes of regulations would be defendable in court. The would never pass for political reasons.