It’s been a little over a decade since Walt, one of my best friends, took his life, and left an emptiness in our lives that persisted for years. I wasn’t there, but I’ve seen it happen in my dreams more than once. He was depressed, tripping, and had access to his step-father’s gun. He went out into the woods, wrote an incomprehensible note, and put the rifle to his head and pulled the trigger. He was 19, had a wicked sense of humor, and I would have trusted him with my life. Apparently, it was his own that he couldn’t be trusted with. His life, the LSD, and the rifle. If it hadn’t been for that combination, including the rifle, I believe he’d be alive today. Instead, I only see him in my dreams, and they are almost always bad dreams.
It takes a lot for me to be able to say that the government shouldn’t have been able to take that rifle away from him. Suicide is often used as a rationale for gun control. Next to accidents, it is among the things that gun control would most likely stop. Particularly cases like Walt’s, where the suicide was likely not premeditated and the inclination would have passed with the trip. It’s extremely difficult to know something would have saved a loved one’s life, and not think that something should be done, but that’s more or less where I have arrived on the issue.
I don’t oppose all gun control. I could even come down in favor of stringent gun control in communities that favor it. I also believe, however, that you’re not paranoid if they are out to get you. While most gun control advocates may genuinely support a right to gun ownership above and beyond the expedience of conceding the point, I remember the 90’s all too well not to be at least a little concerned. Absent excessive gun control laws, I’m not sure how the ruling in McDonald vs. Chicago would even have been necessary.
The federalist in me would be fine with allowing states and local jurisdictions to set up whatever laws they want in exchange, but because guns are moveable, that’s not going to be a satisfactory solution for many. Opponents of gun control want to be able to take their guns with them, proponents of gun control rightly point out that Virginia’s gun laws will lead to more guns in Maryland, regardless of what Maryland’s laws are.
Some of it goes back to the 90’s. The 90’s were a terrible time for gun control opponents and gun control advocates pressed their advantage. Every time some kid shot up a school, that was support for more gun control regardless of whether the gun control proposed applied the incident in question. The whole thing set up a dynamic where the only way to stop this justification for gun control (logistically) is for these rampages to stop happening, which is nigh-impossible. Otherwise, each incident can be a call for more gun control. It need not be related to the situation at hand, but instead can be a general thing (Columbine did involve illicit gun sales, but calls were not limited to the specifics of the situation). Those calls are more muted these days, and met with calls for more guns, not due to the fact that our gun control laws are better or more restrictive than they were, but simply changing political dynamics. If I had to choose between the atmosphere of the 90’s and the atmosphere now, I’ll take the atmosphere now.
I’m not worried about a complete rifle ban, but do worry about Chicago-style laws. The Supreme Court has actually helped in this regard. With the constitutional protection of gun ownership, I’m more willing than ever before to consider various restrictions. It remains a firewall in the discussion of who, precisely, is allowed to own what. It’s probably the nature of that discussion itself, which has lead me to “when in doubt, oppose gun control.”
Nice article. I actually break rather sharply from libertarian purity when it comes to guns. This comes from 2 things:
1. I’ve grown up in a society where it is illegal for civilians to hold guns. In Singapore gun control relly works. Few criminals can get their hands on guns. Gun violence rate is much lower than the US as are homicide rates.
2a. From a Hobbesian standpoint, government is instituted in order to maintain a monopoly on the legitimate use of force so as to end the war of all against all. That means that one of the first things to go should be the tools that would make said war much easier to carry out.
2b. Since nothing short of the cessation of violence is satisfactory, arming civilians means that cops have to be more heavily armed and/or more agressive in order to perform their basic function.
The freedom to own a gun therefore is firstly not even a fundamental right and can seem downright suspect.
That said, in a society like the US, where there is an existing gun culture, where there is a massive rural populace which uses guns to hunt or shoot at wild animals that enter their property, where there is a constant influx of guns through a border which is difficult to secure, criminalising guns takes them out of innocent civilians and puts them into the hands of criminals. I don’t think repealing the 2nd amendment in the US is necessarily a good idea, but there is no reason why gun control couldnt work in other more favourable situations. I certainly wouldn’t advocate for the right to hold guns in societies which previously did not have such a right and had up till then done a good job of keeping guns out of their society
One of the big issues with gun control in the US is that for it to work anywhere, it has to work everywhere. It’s hard to tailor it to “more favorable situations.” Otherwise, what might work in Maryland won’t work in Maryland because Virginia is right next door.
I might agree with your last point, though. If we didn’t already have so many guns, and we didn’t already have the gun culture, I would probably be reluctant to start introducing them.
This is an interesting argument. As someone who is generally quite libertarian on the issue of guns, I’m always a little bit wary of how my position applies to urban environments. One of the things that separates Singapore (and New York) from the rural US is density. What works in one kind of place doesn’t always work in another kind of place.
Of course, as Will points out, these things aren’t neatly separable in the US. I’m not sure what the right approach is.
Gun ownership out here is very much not discouraged by the police. Not because of right-wingery, but because their ability to respond to an emergency across a mountainous county over half the size of New Jersey is limited.
Not to be rude, but I’d very much rather not live a society with the authority characteristics of Singapore. At all.
Seriously, not trying to be rude, I just know no other way of accurately saying it.
Dude, to each his own. If people want to live in an envrionment where the war of all against all is still fairly extant, I don’t really have an argument to stop them from doing so. (The question of justice has more to do with what about those guys who cannot move,and what shouldn’t people be forced to live with)
The officers of Leviathan have their own interests. If the “war of all against all” is the characterization for a society with a high degree of individual freedom, well better that than a lopsided Them vs The Rest of Us war.
I wasn’t solely referring to gun control, but on that specifically I’m leery of anything that smacks of trusting only the ruling class with them. Nobody protects us from their violence.
If the “war of all against all” is the characterization for a society with a high degree of individual freedom
The war of all against all characterises a society where people are effectively free to kill, assault, rape and steal from one another, but not effectively free to hold property or pursue their own conception of the good consistent with other people being effectively free to pursue theirs.
Murali –
You say:
“The war of all against all characterises a society where people are effectively free to kill, assault, rape and steal from one another, but not effectively free to hold property or pursue their own conception of the good consistent with other people being effectively free to pursue theirs.”
Is there a real example of such a society?
Not in absolute terms, but in terms of degree yes. In the US, people face fewer actual impediments when it comes to commiting violence against one another than people do in Singapore. Their property is less secure. Violent crime statistics back this up.
Look, if you don’t go into bad neighbourhoods because it is too dangerous, you are being coerced, and illegitimately so. Not only is there no purpose to such coercion, it impinges on an important liberty: freedom of movement. The dangerous-ness of the neighbourhood is not some background variable, it is a general indication of the probability of being subject violence if you enter. If that is not a threat, I don’t know what is?
Long ago, I quit believing the USA would ever do anything meaningful about gun safety. Had this discussion before: I wish young people were trained on basic weapons safety, that the weapons themselves were safe, that weapons discipline was taught so they’d be unloaded and locked up. That’s not going to happen.
Emotional triage: something bad happens.
Stage 1: Can I do anything about it right now? If yes, do it.
Stage 2: When can I do anything about it? If yes, start planning and execute on those plans.
Stage 3: Can I ever do anything about this? If the answer comes back No, quit beating yourself up.
Yesterday, I talked about lobbying and Schwerpunkt. It’s easy to lobby for something narrow such as the Second Amendment. It’s hard to lobby for something amorphous, like mental health or the various problems of poverty. Guns? Try to enact any sensible legislation, you’ll face the wrath of the NRA.
Interestingly, NRA isn’t a very big lobby. It’s power is completely out of proportion to its size. The NRA’s advantage is their shaped-charge argument: they can focus on one specific issue.
I’m long past Stage 3 on anything which used to concern me any more. Anything I do is pretty much useless and I know it. I do it because it scratches an itch. There’s no talking sense to anyone about gun safety, not here in the USA.
It’s worth noting that I am looking into getting a gun, but before I do I would like to be trained on how to use it. I looked up places that will train me. Guess who they are all affiliated with?
Is this another one of your quizzes?
Tuesday Hint: Blaise is not a fan.
🙂
“While most gun control advocates may genuinely support a right to gun ownership above and beyond the expedience of conceding the point, I remember the 90′s all too well not to be at least a little concerned. “
This.
I’m of the mind that trying to prevent tragedies like the one involving your friend or mass-shootings is impossible. They are too random, too unimaginable to craft laws around them. The person who shoots up his workplace would just find another way to hurt people. The person who is suicidal would likely just choose another method. So with that said, gun crime is the issue we shoudl attempt to tackle.
On that front I am a big fan of putting serial numbers on bullets. Link them to point-of-purchase and you will see gun crime go down – guaranteed. Of course, people will woryy about the govt keeping lists of citizens who have bought large quantities of ammunition, but I think it’s a fair trade.
The “just another way” argument fails badly. The fact is, people do use guns in acts of random violence. The gun doesn’t care. It’s just a tool. Sure, we could substitute knives or bats arrows or Monty Python’s Attack by Fruit for the gun, but nothing in any of those weapons systems is geared to prevent random violence. Guns are used because they’re the purpose made tool of choice, they can reliably knock down a target at great distance with great lethality.
We want some technical solution to what is fundamentally a People Problem. Someone has a bad moment, reaches for a gun, two seconds later someone’s shot and dying.
While the “gun show” is part and parcel of American life, let’s not pretend the gun owners are serious about attenuating violence. They aren’t. We have more restrictions on the sale of food than the sale of weapons.
I disagree. I think the only reason the argument seems to fail is because guns still exist. We can’t prove a hypothetical i.e. what would those intent on murder do in the absence of guns? But actually, we can see what they would do:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akihabara_massacre
And re: suicide, that one is a no-brainer. They are going to just use another method.
Shrug. The Akihabara massacre doesn’t eliminate one gun-related act of violence from the coroner’s statistics. As I said upstream, Mike, I don’t care any more. The gun show loophole is going to be kept open forever. As a nation, we’re the world’s largest arms dealer. While the Fast ‘n Furious charade continues and the gun show loophole remains open, let’s not kid ourselves, eh?
I used to deal with refugees more than I do today. Used to run across a good deal of domestic violence in that context, I’d get the call when things went sideways. The people involved didn’t want the state to intervene, they wanted me to do something about it. So I did. I’ve had weeping women curse me and the policemen to our faces as they dragged these abusive men out of the house.
America loves its guns. Love isn’t a rational emotion, Mike. Every statistic about gun violence is meaningless in the face of these emotions. So why even worry about it, asks Your’s Truly, no matter what the facts might be, nothing’s going to change.
I’m ambivalent about gun control, but I think it’s a bit specious to take the position that, absent guns, the same level of murder would take place.
Guns are special.
They are machines that translate an impulse and a twitch of the finger into deadly action. I believe that it’s still the case that most gun deaths still occur between family members. I’m sure it’s easier to kill your goddam wife with a gun than to beat her to death, or stab her to death: these deaths are more proximate, more violent, and more real, and take a higher level of passion.
The US murder rate, is still more than three times that of the UK, and five times that of Japan. When we talk about gun control, we should at least have a real conversation: gun restriction will reduce the level of violent killings.
Snarky,
“I’m ambivalent about gun control, but I think it’s a bit specious to take the position that, absent guns, the same level of murder would take place. “
I think you misread what I am saying. What I am saying is gun law cannot stop those very random acts of gun violence (mass shootings, suicide). I do believe that the right laws can reduce more common forms of gun violence (mostly gang crime).
I’m ambivalent about gun control, but I think it’s a bit specious to take the position that, absent guns, the same level of murder would take place.
Is this measurable?
I mean, if there was a major gun law that qualified as some form of “gun control” that expired recently, then could we measure whether murder increased after this law expired?
If it went down, could we argue that, no, it’s not specious as much as counter-intuitive and see what might really be going on?
I think the opposite is more likely to be true, actually. Bouts of insanity and depression and the violence that occurs because of them are less likely to be lethal without a gun around. Someone intent on killing themselves will, of course, find a way, but it’s often based on more transient emotions and some methods are more successful than others.
Street crime, on the other hand, often has serious money on the line. That’s where you make damn sure you’re armed.
Jaybird, get your damn dirty facts out of this discussion!
I think the reason the NRA has been so successful in targeting firearms related issues is a matter of syntax. Gun control groups focus on the tools, when in reality, tools are simply not capable of acting without intervention of an outside source.
I absolutely agree with Blaise, a technical solution to a human problem is doomed to failure. If we focus on CRIMINAL violence instead of GUN violence, stop blaming the tool AND stop trying to punish everyone for the actions of a few, we could probably see meaningful change.
Unfortunately, both the NRA and the Brady Campaign are entrenched into monologues of emotionally based rhetoric that guarantees that logic cannot be inserted into this situation.
I conclude that neither the nanny state (i.e. strict gun control) nor arming everyone to the teeth is the solution. There obviously needs to be a better system of enforced penalties for using a firearm in a criminal matter, and there definitely needs to be a better examination of the people purchasing weapons.
Either extreme solution leaves the public vulnerable to attack. Me, personally, I’d prefer to have the right to return fire, not just run for cover.
The actions of the few? Suicide accounts for about half the gun deaths in the USA. I mean, there’s no stopping this sort of thing, maybe people will resort to poison or something else. Doesn’t matter. Nobody’s going to return fire on a suicide.
Women poison themselves, men shoot themselves, IIRC.
It wouldn’t occur to me to poison myself, as you mention it, Pat. I’m such a guy.
It would be like a V-8 moment—Damn, that hurt. I could have taken poison. D’oh!
Good point. Frankly, I think what is really needed is an examination of why we in particular are so damn violent regardless of how we carry it out.
Ever seen the movie with Michael Douglas, Falling Down? Thing about America nobody gets until they’ve left and come back… we’re all so many grenades with loose pins. This is a Hi Stress life we live here. We work too much, we don’t get out and enjoy ourselves, we hate our government, we ignore each other, it’s all about the Individual here.
And then we wonder why every so often one of us detonates.
No sooner has this individual done his American Shuhada thing than the news crews arrive and some blow-dried blonde pokes a mike in some neighbour’s face so he can say, as he always fucking does. “I dunno, he was a quiet guy, always kept to himself, I was really surprised.”
Yeah. Really surprised. We live cheek by jowl with all these people and we don’t know them. This Individual Schtick we indulge in is killing us, some faster than others. And when they blow up, they take out other people with them.
Isn’t individualism & being an anti-social workaholic a bit contradictory? Being yourself doesn’t require being by yourself, far from it. Further you think about it, where’s the meaning to it if you don’t associate with anyone?
Suicide rates are strongly correlated with income inequality. Not to bring up an old subject…
Whoops. Take that back. No evidence. Mental illness and homicide, yes. But I have no stats for suicide. Sorry.
I’m going to disagree on a few points pressed by prior posters:
Will Truman: “The federalist in me would be fine with allowing states and local jurisdictions to set up whatever laws they want. . .” Federalism has limits. One of them is that individual states may not abrogate any of those rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. The tenth amendment is the original guarantor of this limit.
Murali: “From a Hobbesian standpoint, government is instituted in order to maintain a monopoly on the legitimate use of force so as to end the war of all against all.” One of the truly revolutionary ideas embodied in the founding documents of the United States is that the people are sovereign over the government. The founders institutionalized this idea, in part, by including the second amendment in the bill of rights. It guaranteed that the government would not have a monopoly on force. Hobbes was brilliant, but he erred when he posited the war of all against all as a condition that followed when human beings exist in a state of nature.
While I don’t really consider myself pro-gun control, I am probably more sympathetic to it than, say, Mike Dwyer or even Will. But growing up as I did around a gun culture–my father was an enthusiast and set up tables at gun shows on a regular basis–I’m also skeptical of the claims I grew up hearing, namely, that “the government” is out to get our guns, or that a victim of a shooting rampage (I’m thinking of a situation in the early 1990s) would be alive today if only she had a gun, or that the Waco incident was first and foremost and only a conspiracy to deprive law-abiding citizens of their right to guns.
I bring this up in the spirit of respectfully disclosing my bias as I disagree, partially, with the statement that the ’90s were such a bad time for supporters of gun rights. I know too little about the state level, other than that shortly after Columbine Colorado tried to close the “gun show” loophole (I have no idea of the effect it had on gun shows, by then my father wasn’t really doing them any more, but my understanding is that in practice, it did little to otherwise prevent gun purchases.) But at the federal level, it seems that the regulations were anemic at best, and got weaker throughout the decade. The Brady Law, to my knowledge, banned only a certain class of guns and it was easy to get around. And Lopez v. U.S. was decided in 1995.
There may very well be counter evidence. In addition to my ignorance about state laws, I certainly don’t know all the federal laws to know how anemic they really were, and I assume the robust prosecution of the War on Drugs probably involved equally robust gun laws to prosecute alleged drug traffickers by other means. I’ll also concede that an important element in the Waco fiasco appears to have been a concern about the Branch Davidians stockpiling arms, which I suppose does make the even at least partially a “gun issue.”
But I am skeptical about the proposition that things were all that bad for supporters of gun rights to begin with. Again, take this with whatever grain of salt my disclosure above might entitle you.
Pierre,
The 90s were a bad time because gun control advocates were gaining ground in ways that seemed to signal other, more harsh regulations were around the corner. The Brady bill was the opening salvo in a campaign to eventually ban handguns completely.
Except it never happened. Or even came close.
Which makes the NRA’s paranoia about Obama coming for their guns…confusing. The Democrats have dropped the entire issue.
The paranoia about Obama had nothing to do with he Brady bill. That was based on his support for draconian gun laws in Illinois and his stated support for handgun bans nation-wide.
Except he’s been in office 3 years now and not a single bill has been raised. Not a speech. NOTHING. Democrats officially dropped gun control a decade or more ago.
It’s not on their radar, not on their agenda.
And yet paranoid rednecks are hoarding ammo because they’re SURE Obama is after their guns! The fact that he hasn’t done anything is apparently proof of his nefarious plot.
Morat – you’ll notice I said it had nothing to do with the Brady Bill (past tense). You’re right that Obama has done nothing to go after guns and Dems have given up the issue for now. But in 2008, based on his track record in IL and in Congress, it seemed a pretty rational fear.
Yeah, that sounds about right. In 2008, there were reasons to be concerned. A politician from a place known for more stringent gun control, this “cling to god and guns” comment, and so on. At this point, though, it seems rather clear that it’s, at most, not very high on his agenda.
Except the fear hasn’t abated. It’s INTENSIFIED.
Even in 2008 the fear was based on a “Obama’s hasn’t said a word about it, ergo he’s planning it!” view. Now? Apparently he’s lulling you into a false sense of security.
I disagree. I go to gun shows every year. The tone now is nothing like it was in 2008.
I can certainly can see how, with Clinton running on passing the Brady Bill, and then with him signing it into law, one might cone to that conclusion.
I’ll add that my skepticism about the ’90s is fueled by my “insider-outsider” observation of the gun culture, or at least that part of the culture with which my father was involved. And here I apologize because I’m going astray from the topic of gun control, which is what Will writes about.
There were a lot of things good or potentially good about the gun culture: conviviality, a certain respect for individual autonomy (although it was, by my lights, “autonomy” for straight white males….anecdotally speaking, I saw few Latinos at those shows, although I saw some, and even fewer African Americans), a dedication to certain first principles of courtesy and respect for hard work.
But there were a lot of disturbing things. There was not a little racism and not a little homophobia. There was also a country-whiggish suspicion about government that in my opinion bordered on paranoia, at least sometimes. There was also a gainsaying of militia groups of the “I don’t approve of what they’re doing or the means they’re choosing, but you really can’t blame them” variety.
These are only my observations, and I have offered only generalities, and my “observations” are limited to my remembrance of things I observed as a preteen and early teenager. I have a strong antipathy to what I see as the darker side of that culture–or that portion of the culture I was privileged enough to witness.
The thing that I remember about the 90’s was that those who opposed gun ownership more broadly could, to a far greater degree than now, say so. There were a lot of them. That’s why I’m with Mike that gun rights advocates (GRA) were not wrong to suspect that the Brady Bill was only the beginning. Add in how every incident was used to further the cause, and a future where “This didn’t work, we need to do more…” in perpetuity.
Snarky complains above that GRA’s won’t admit that gun control will have an appreciable difference in murder rates. For me, the issue is that for it to have a really significant difference, you’d have to start seriously limiting the overall number of guns. That means that Brady wouldn’t have done it. Closing the gun show loophole wouldn’t have done it. To get to the point where something would have done it, where the events that were fueling gun control stopped, you’d have to do a lot (and even then, it would take a long time for the guns currently in circulation to stop working.
Seriously, if you’d asked me around 1996 (when I was vaguely in favor of gun control), or in 1999 (by which time I’d turned against it) if we’d have the gun freedoms we have now or even what we had then, I’d have been skeptical.
I would also add that the gun-control folks still seem to be biding their time. When an incident happens there is almost always a push to frame it in gun-control terms. Look what hapened after the Giffords shooting. Suddenly high-capacity magazines were a major threat.
Elias Isquith wrote a post at some point talking about the gun control movement and their attempts to regroup. I can’t find it, unfortunately.
Right now the political realities are such that I don’t think GRA’s have much to worry about. Of course, the political realities are due in part because of the fierce resistance of GRA’s.
Will,
“I think the opposite is more likely to be true, actually. Bouts of insanity and depression and the violence that occurs because of them are less likely to be lethal without a gun around. Someone intent on killing themselves will, of course, find a way, but it’s often based on more transient emotions and some methods are more successful than others.”
So let’s unpack this, but assume that whatever the new law would look like, it wouldn’t actually ban guns…
A) Person wants to commit suicide
– What would a law look like that would prevent them from using a gun? Maybe some kind of waiting period or even a psych evaluation. So would it limit suicides by gun? Sure. Would it limit the actual number of suicides? Probably not. The U.S. is 41st in total suicides behind other countries where guns are very hard to come by. I am assuming that in those countries people find other ways to kill themselves. So does gun law really have a positive effect in that scenario?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate#List
B) Gun crime
– Criminals don’t want to get caught. They want to use their guns for crimes and get away with it. Let’s take my suggestion of serializing bullets. A laser etches a serial number onto every bullet. These are linked to point-of-sell. Bullets used in crimes can easily be traced back to the manufacturer. People don’t want to get caught. They reconsider using guns in crimes. Maybe swords become popular again but with regards to actual improvements, the law would be successful.
A) It’s difficult to do cross-country comparisons due to different cultural attitudes towards suicide. Some people… are going to find ways to kill themselves successfully regardless of what we do. Take away the gun and they’ll hang themselves. Some, however, would fail in their attempt if it were not for a gun. With others… the inclination would pass.
B) Maybe. I think the financial incentives are such that it would be worthwhile for them to innovate around the law. You might see a difference in which kinds of people are holding the guns (I would expect it to be a godsend for the Mexican Cartels, for instance), but I’m not sure it would reduce overall levels (or reduce them by all that much).
Mike –
With respect to putting serial numbers on bullets – are you sure you mean bullets? The bullet is the projectile that leaves the gun at high speed when it is fired. A round of ammo is how we normally describe a single bullet and the other components assembled with it that it takes to send the bullet downrange. A round of ammo consists of the bullet, a metal casing that holds the bullet, a load of gunpowder in the casing behind the bullet and a primer in the base of the casing. When the primer is struck by the firing pin it ignites the powder, which vigorously pushes the bullet down the barrel and on its way.
Bullets often get badly deformed or even fragment when they strike a target as soft as a game animal. Hard to imagine a laser cut serial number on a bullet that would reliably survive hitting anything.
The other contemporary suggestion is to fix guns so they microstamp the casing or the primer when they’re fired. The problem here is that revolvers retain the spent casings once they’re fired, so they don’t leave evidence behind. Semi automatic weapons eject the spent casings, but there are already devices that will catch the expelled casings. Such devices obviate the need to pick up spent brass, which is litter at least, and which is good fodder for reloading in any case. Either way, with a revolver or a semi auto equipped to catch brass, if you stamp the casing or primer, the evidence isn’t left behind.
Then there are other problems.
What about people who will take sandpaper and remove the serial number from the bullet?
What about people who make their own ammo? There are millions of us who do that and some of us have enough components to leave a considerable supply to our heirs. None of our components are serial numbered.
If the proposal is guns that microstamp casings or primers, what about the estimated 200+ million guns already in private hands in this country? That estimate may be low – I myself would never tell anyone outside of my immediate family and closest shooting buddies how many guns I own. I would not acknowledge owning any at all to a stranger or when asked by a pollster. Anyway, none of these 200+ million guns would microstamp anything.
Laser bullet etching and case stamping are proposals by liburals that clearly don’t know anything about guns or reloading. I don’t know how either proposal can be practical.
The cheapest bass catcher I know is just to put the pistol in a plastic grocery bag and fire through the bag. To add to the fun I’d throw down a couple of shell casing I collected at the local range.
Got it all planned out, eh?
Actually I saw the plastic bag trick on a tv crime show, The First 48. Leaving brass was my idea. The point is that these liberal pie in the sky ideas aren’t practical.
Montana,
As a shooter of 30 years, yes, I am aware of the difference between a bullet and a casing.
I’m sure you have heard of ballistic fingerprinting, correct?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_fingerprinting
This doesn’t always work, because, as you point out, sometimes bullets fragment upon firing. But often they don’t. So the serial number would be stamped on the bullet. Additionally, some people have talked about it being stamped on the brass or the primer. The point is to create more evidence trails which leads to more convictions which mean a (hopefully) deterrent situation with time.
Most of the time, spent bullets that hit bodies look like this:
http://www.bsapp.com/forensics_illustrated/photos/Unit_7_Pictures_Ammunition_Ballistics/Fired_Bullets/Fired_Bullets__9__Random_Hollow_Points.JPG
As you can see, plenty of room for a laser etching.