Of course, deciding that something must be done doesn’t even get you halfway there. The ultimate goal of any gun legislation is to decrease gun violence while at the same time limiting as little as possible access to firearms for legitimate uses like self-protection and sport. And a law like the 1994 assault-weapon ban wasn’t particularly effective in this regard. Though gun violence did decrease during the years in which the ban was in effect, a 2004 University of Pennsylvania study .. http://www.sas.upenn.edu/jerrylee/research/aw_final2004.pdf .. of the subject concluded that the ban couldn’t take much or any of the credit. This is mostly because the ban exempted guns and magazines that were made before 1994, leaving a huge stockpile which were legal to own or sell. The relative rarity of mass shootings makes it statistically difficult to analyze whether this ban had an effect on these sorts of incidents, although The Washington .. http://topics.time.com/washington/ .. Post’s Brad Plumer points out .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/17/everything-you-need-to-know-about-banning-assault-weapons-in-one-post/ .. that such incidences have increased since the ban was lifted in 2004.
It’s this legacy of American gun ownership that has vexed reformers for years. Regardless of the restrictions that states, cities, or the federal government place on gun ownership, there already exists nearly enough guns in this country to arm every man, woman, and child in America. And many of these tools are simple and sturdy enough to remain accurate and functional for generations. Furthermore, gun ownership is too cherished in this country for its citizens to accept a forced round up of guns. In fact, it’s an irrational fear of this very scenario that makes gun owners wary of President Obama and so generous with campaign donations to candidates who support Second Amendment rights.
But these facts raise the question: What if anything can the government realistically do to decrease gun violence in America? We’ll surely hear a number of proposals this week, but here are three that attack the problem as an economist would: through incentives.
Tax the Bullets
One proposal — first floated .. http://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/04/us/moynihan-asks-big-tax-increase-on-ammunition.html .. nearly twenty years ago by New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan — is to just forget about the guns and instead go after bullets. Moynihan’s proposal would have taxed certain bullets upwards of 10,000 percent, and was aimed at removing some of the more dangerous bullets from the streets. Would a similar proposal help curb the sort of gang violence and mass shootings that gun control advocates today decry? Possibly. The logic behind a robust bullet tax is that it would make bullets prohibitively expensive if you planned to use a lot of them. Theoretically, a tax could be created that made all bullets expensive, except those sold to law enforcement organizations. There could even be a loophole enacted for shooting ranges, as long as those ranges were responsible for making sure the bullets didn’t leave their premises. This way it wouldn’t be prohibitively expensive to buy enough bullets to defend oneself, but it would make it more difficult for mass shooters to accumulate ammunition stockpiles like the one Aurora shooter James Holmes .. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/20/james-holmes-aurora-shooting_n_1691191.html .. had.
Require Gun Owners to Purchase Liability Insurance
Another idea is to have the government treat guns much like it does cars: Require owners to purchase liability insurance. Such an idea was proposed in Illinois in 2009 .. http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/BillStatus.asp?DocTypeID=HB&DocNum=687&GAID=10&SessionID=76 .. but never passed into law. The first step to requiring this type of insurance would be to set up national or state-by-state gun registries and licensing mechanisms — a step Second Amendment absolutists oppose because they believe such measures would compromise their Constitutional rights. This step alone, were it to gain enough support, would probably do a lot to curb gun violence, as any gun in the country could be tracked by law enforcement to the person who should be responsible for it. But the next step of requiring gun owners to purchase liability insurance would create the incentive for insurers to determine which individuals are fit for gun ownership. It would also incentivize those insurers to require gun owners to store their property in a safe way, and to take other steps like undergoing gun safety training.
Each of these proposals has its drawbacks. Those policies that have the least effect on responsible gun owners, like the voluntary repurchase programs, aren’t very effective at curbing gun violence. More heavy-handed approaches like the bullet tax or national registration coupled with liability insurance requirements put gun ownership out of the reach of some people through direct government action. And for Second Amendment absolutists, this is not acceptable.
Newtown, Connecticut was not the first mass shooting in America, and it won’t be the first time gun control advocates try to square their ideas with the American cultural and constitutional attachment to firearms. But we should all remember that if there were easy solutions to this problem, we probably would have figured them out by now.
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
