Americans love guns.
Take the guns away and americans will be sad. We don't want to make americans sad. :mad:
However, Americans also like to stay alive and don't like school shootings. :(
So, how could Americans be convinced to want less guns in the street?
(Because fewer guns equals fewer gun deaths. It's true, look it up. Ok, there are other social factors that contribute to killings, but there's nothing preventing the USA from tackling those, too.)
My proposal: An annual tax on all privately owned guns. The bigger the gun/magazine/firepower, the higher the tax.
This of course provides a big incentive to restrict oneself to the bare minimum necessary to ensure ones safety or satisfy ones hobby.
There are of course many problems with that. One being, that the state doesn't know how many guns every american owns, meaning that the state would initially have to rely on the honesty of the american people, while future gun sales would have to be registered on the federal level.
And if it turns out that an upstanding citizen failed to register his private weapons cache, the penalty would be the same as for every other instance of tax fraud.
Sure, criminals would very likely never register their guns. But on the other hand, cops would have the right and duty to search suspects for guns. And if an unregistered weapon is found, they'd have every right to see what else they might have hidden. Heck, they could even plant guns (instead of drugs) on a suspect (which I understand is common practice) and in case the suspect is innocent, the worst that would happen is a stern letter from the IRS instead of years of jailtime.
And while we are at it, we could combine the process of registering a gun with a licence which you can only acquire by passing a standardized test. Kinda like a driver's licence for guns.
It would be a relatively slow process to de-gun the USA that way, but it has only upsides:
* It doesn't cost money. It generates money!
* The second amendment will not be touched. No rights will be taken away.
* Police work will be alleviated.
* Owning big guns will be even more prestigious than now!
* A nationwide mandatory gun registry will make it harder for criminals to arm themselves without alarming the authorities.
* The mandatory licence will increase the chances that only responsible people can get a gun.
Oh, and very likely less people will get killed as a byproduct.
Come to think of it, there are no drawbacks.
Even extreme right-wingers should like it, because that way the poor black population is likely to get disarmed much faster than the rich white folks. Always a concern for certain kinds of people.
I saved America. You can thank me now.
Take the guns away and americans will be sad. We don't want to make americans sad. :mad:
However, Americans also like to stay alive and don't like school shootings. :(
So, how could Americans be convinced to want less guns in the street?
(Because fewer guns equals fewer gun deaths. It's true, look it up. Ok, there are other social factors that contribute to killings, but there's nothing preventing the USA from tackling those, too.)
My proposal: An annual tax on all privately owned guns. The bigger the gun/magazine/firepower, the higher the tax.
This of course provides a big incentive to restrict oneself to the bare minimum necessary to ensure ones safety or satisfy ones hobby.
There are of course many problems with that. One being, that the state doesn't know how many guns every american owns, meaning that the state would initially have to rely on the honesty of the american people, while future gun sales would have to be registered on the federal level.
And if it turns out that an upstanding citizen failed to register his private weapons cache, the penalty would be the same as for every other instance of tax fraud.
Sure, criminals would very likely never register their guns. But on the other hand, cops would have the right and duty to search suspects for guns. And if an unregistered weapon is found, they'd have every right to see what else they might have hidden. Heck, they could even plant guns (instead of drugs) on a suspect (which I understand is common practice) and in case the suspect is innocent, the worst that would happen is a stern letter from the IRS instead of years of jailtime.
And while we are at it, we could combine the process of registering a gun with a licence which you can only acquire by passing a standardized test. Kinda like a driver's licence for guns.
It would be a relatively slow process to de-gun the USA that way, but it has only upsides:
* It doesn't cost money. It generates money!
* The second amendment will not be touched. No rights will be taken away.
* Police work will be alleviated.
* Owning big guns will be even more prestigious than now!
* A nationwide mandatory gun registry will make it harder for criminals to arm themselves without alarming the authorities.
* The mandatory licence will increase the chances that only responsible people can get a gun.
Oh, and very likely less people will get killed as a byproduct.
Come to think of it, there are no drawbacks.
Even extreme right-wingers should like it, because that way the poor black population is likely to get disarmed much faster than the rich white folks. Always a concern for certain kinds of people.
I saved America. You can thank me now.