For decades, America has been wrestling with the difficult dilemma of how to protect citizens from gun violence and the tremendous loss of life it causes, while at the same time not infringing on the Second Amendment rights of gun owners. Every time I learn about another school shooting, it both pains, and at the same time, tremendously scares me. I have spent a long time thinking about this, and I believe I have come up with what some may consider a radical solution, but a resolution after all, to appease both sides of the debate while at the same time achieving the desired result: fewer deaths from guns. I propose that we control bullets instead. That way gun owners get to keep their guns and less people will die.

Whenever there is a mass shooting, especially in a school, I find myself wondering, “If only there was a restriction on the number of live rounds one could purchase, then we would not see such carnage.” After all, if the true reason for having guns is for self-defense or hunting, then how many live rounds of ammunition does one person really need? How many times do you literally need to kill someone in order to protect yourself? Hopefully that never should be the case,  hence my argument. You don’t need that many live rounds or bullets. Any individual purchasing large numbers of ammunition would immediately trigger a red flag or become suspicious and a person of interest for law enforcement.

I propose that what needs to be done is that every gun owner can only purchase a limited number of live rounds and that those rounds would have to be tagged to their gun license. That is, every bullet must be matched and recorded with the gun license at the time of purchase. In this case, if you do not have a valid license for your firearm then you should not be able to legally purchase bullets for it. Rubber bullets should be sold for target practice. If bullet sales are tracked through a data base with the license and information of the gun owner, then it would be much easier to determine who was responsible for a shooting. It also keeps ammunition out of the hands of the people who obtained their guns illegally, since many shootings are perpetrated by individuals who have obtained guns through illicit means.

To discourage the manufacturing of illegal bullets, there will need to be severe penalties for anyone caught doing this. Therefore, if an illegal bullet was used in the commission of a crime, then not only would the perpetrator be punished, but also the person who illegally made the bullet as well. I truly believe that if we implemented this strategy that we would be able to make a serious dent in the number of shootings that are plaguing America today. With the strong NRA lobby and so many staunch gun rights advocates, it would be very difficult to reduce the number of guns in the American society where guns are so ingrained in its culture.

We should be able to reach a compromise where all parties get what they want. Gun owners and the NRA should be comfortable with the fact that they don’t need an abundance of ammunition in exchange for keeping their guns. They will also need to let go of the argument that it is necessary for them to own guns to protect themselves from the government, hence the abundance of bullets. Gun control advocates would be a lot more comfortable with not having an abundance of live ammunition so readily available that can be used in the taking of innocent lives. The argument that putting more guns on the street will result in fewer people being shot, although illogical to me, may be a little be easier to accept if you know that they will not be as harmful as they are now. We all must agree that there must be some concession, and we all need to reach some consensus that what we are currently doing is not working and something must change for us to see a reduction in this unnecessary violence.