29
Billions of bullets: Cheap and unregulated
According to Wired magazine, 10 billion bullets are manufactured in the United States every year.
To view this content, Javascript must be enabled and Adobe Flash Player must be installed.
As Congress and the White House try to figure out gun control legislation, there's some support for limiting high-capacity magazines. That, in turn, has turned at least part of the debate about guns to a debate about bullets.
Joanna Pearlstein is a senior editor at Wired magazine and her latest piece looks at the business of bullets.
"There's about 10 billion bullets manufactured in the United States every year," said Pearlstein.
Federal regulations mostly restrict buying bullets based on who you are, said Pearlstein. For example,there are limits and restrictions for those are who are not in the country legally, those who are dishonorably discharged from the military, those who have certain felony convictions or for those under the age of 18.
"That said," she continued, "there's not a lot of background checks that are being done. So the onus is on you as the purchaser to basically be honest when you go into a store and buy ammunition."
Comedian Chris Rock once famously stated in a stand-up routine that instead of gun control, "all bullets should cost $5,000."
Pearlstein said you can really see why a bullet tax might be a good idea. "As cigarette taxes have increased over the years, consumption of cigarettes has declined; the tobacco industry has been up in arms about this for years," she said. "It stands to reason that if you can buy a box of 50 bullets for $20, maybe if that box cost $40 or $80 or $10,000, maybe we'd be buying fewer of them."
Pages
I am very disappointed with this poorly researched and reported story. I am a hunter and target shooter and law-abiding citizen. Your suggestion would effectively take away my right to hunt and shoot, while doing absolutely nothing to stop criminals and crazies. Ban or excessively tax anything and what happens? You create a black market for the item, that is readily accessible by criminals. And someone who is deranged and wants to make a statement is not going to let a tax or a law stop him.
I have been a hunter and target shooter since I was a teenager. Ammunition has never been more expense for the middle class Americans. Nor has it ever been in as short of supply as it is today. One of the driving factors behind the rapid price rise and lack of stock has been the massive purchases of ammunition which the Obama administration has been doing for various federal agencies. Even the Education Department has been buying up ammunition.
Ammunition in and of itself is no more dangerous than a can of gasoline. It is all in how the person will use the ammunition with honest intent or to do harm to others. It like the difference between someone using a can of gasoline to run their lawn mover versus the person that puts gasoline into an old whiskey bottle with a rag as a stopper.
Kai (et alia),
Surely you learned during your time in the military that Audie Murphy learned to shoot as a child. Where would we be without MArines who are practiced shooters? And a tax on bullets? Perhaps we should also put a $5,000 tax on any instance of use of the word 'and' in print, on the radio, or on television ... As the right to bear Arms, along with Free Speech and Free Press, ARE RIGHTS, protected by the constitution. Then perhaps you would have your dream of an unfree United States, as our troops would not be able to defend us, our police could not stop the proletariat from burning the homeowners out of their homes, and noone would be able to accurately report on what was happening. $15,000, due now, on penalty of death?
-Christopher Terry ... Concord, Massachusetts
Only $20 for a box of 50 rounds of 9mm? Where??? I would love to get some at that price! The best I've found is $24.95 for 20.
To hear this report you would think ammo was falling from the sky and easy to get. Or that there is some conspiracy to hide ammo sales because a firearm trade group does not track ammo sales. Why would they? We know how much is made in a year, out side of the government businesses don't make what they can sell.
But this is really about making guns look bad so ok to infringe on.
Just a total a lack of research effort, no tax on ammo??? Sales tax, How about this one Pittman-Roberston Act- a 11% excise tax on firearms and ammunition. This 11% has been going into the conservation of wildlife since 1938 via Secretary of the Interior, before that it went into the U.S. Treasury. No tax???? I guess I will have to listen to another show.
I am an avid marketplace listener, and while my personal opinion often differs from the viewpoints presented on the show, I typically find the show both informative and entertaining. Comparing ammunition to cigarettes is a bit of a stretch, but it makes for lively debate. I would very much like to hear a counterpoint to this story.
Telling Kai that a box of ammunition costs less than $20 is much like telling a lactose intolerant person that a gallon of milk costs $20. “That’s not a whole lot of money!” It would be interesting to know how the price of ammunition has changed in recent history. Certain calibers have become difficult to acquire in recent months; retailers in my area have begun to ration sales to delay inevitable inventory shortages.
I am a pretty big fan of Marketplace. I have been listening to your show for a few years now and most of the time I am both informed and entertained. Yesterday during the “Ammunition/Bullets” segment, I was neither informed nor entertained, only disappointed.
Although called rounds, I will refer to rounds as bullets for the rest of my post. This story, being vacant of anything interesting or informative did not take the following into account. The number of bullets bought by the military. The number of bullets bought by DHS and other government agencies. The number of bullets bought by police. The number of bullets shipped to other counties. Bullets used for self defense, hunting and target shooting. And finally, this story did not take into account the second amendment.
I have an idea. Let’s regulate the first amendment the same way so many non gun people are proposing regulating the second amendment, and let’s only let NRA members write the regulations. We can start out with $10 per word written and $13 per word spoken. Actually that is too cheap, let’s say $100 per word written and $1300 per word spoken. Maybe that will make Twitter News the new thing and put radio and podcasters out of business. Or better yet, people would just stop talking and writing. And those Freedom of Information requests, let’s say each person can make one a quarter and they cost $5,000 each. Sounds like some crazy and irrational solutions looking for a problem. Just as ammunition control would be.
P.S. I really got a smile during the story when Kia said something like “let’s say I want to buy some 22 caliber bullets” and the Wired Girl went right into talking about 9mm Lugar. It was like, let’s make this sound like a natural conversation and that we know what we are talking about and turned into, no Kia, the information I gathered is on 9mm Lugar, whatever that is, and that is what I am going to talk about. And no one calls them 9mm Lugar, although technically correct. Just 9mm.
Mr. Ryssdal, I was very disappointed with your Ammunition piece yesterday. It showed no respect whatsoever for every American's Constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Our 2nd Amendment says this right "shall not be infringed" but your coverage made it seem as if it excessively-taxing ammunition would be a clever and acceptable solution. The Bill of Rights stands to prevent those who may be in power at any given time from taking away our individual rights. Furthermore, your ammunition tax "proposal" would unfairly hurt the poor by positioning a Constitutional right out of reach for all but the rich. We would not tolerate making the 1st or 4th or 5th (or any other) Amendment too expensive for low-income Americans to enjoy.
While I think this story is quite misleading and not as well informed and argued as most others Marketplace puts on air, I also think it does well to recognize how difficult it is to get hard data on firearms and ammunition in this country. The firearms industry lobbyists work very hard to make that so. That perhaps is a bigger and better story to report on.
In my experience ammunition is expensive (but then I only think that when I can actually find some to purchase). I hope that another piece is produced soon that presents the other side of the argument so that listeners not committed to one side or the other can decide for themselves what they think and not be solely influenced by this journalism that I find entirely wanting.
Pages
