A Modest Proposal

How much does a bullet cost?

I Googled “buy ammunition” and this site was the top hit returned.

Just a quick glance shows prices like, 1000 rounds for $225.00, or $0.225 per round.  880 rounds for $165.00, or $0.1875 per round.  My favorite headline on the site was 500 hollow point rounds for $285.00, or 57 cents a piece.

So let’s just say that bullets are not expensive.  Cheap, even.

Now let’s calculate how much the life of a human being is worth.  Incalculable?  How much is the life of a six year old child worth?  How much is the life of a school teacher in Connecticut worth?  How much are the lives of a class room full of elementary school kids worth?

I have no idea.  No one does.  Priceless?  That sounds right to me.  More than half a buck?  Duh, absolutely.  Obviously.  It’s insulting to even consider that.

So how is a bullet that exists for no reason other than to end a life worth less than a buck?  Worth less than a quarter?  How is that a fair trade?  We should change our system so that the value of a bullet is the same as the value of the life the bullet ends.  I would even be willing to sell the bullets at a massive discount.  How about we take that $0.57 hollow point bullet and add a tax to it.  I say we tax it at about 20 million percent.

0.57 * 20,000,000% = 0.57 * 200,000 = $114,000.

Compare $114,000 to the value of a human life and you are still getting that hollow point bullet at an obscene discount.  What a savings!  The 2nd amendment still applies.  You still have the right to bear arms.  You still have the right to be a gun owner whose chosen home security device is statistically more likely to end the life of either you or a member of your family, but now the price for your weapon’s ammunition more closely (but still not that close) equals the value of that which it was created to destroy.

It sounds like a fair plan to me.  Actually, it doesn’t, but it sounds more fair than the current system.