Bullet Control.

As President Obama visits Aurora, Colorado following Friday's (20/7/12) mass shooting the inevitable debate about gun control has begun. However I honestly don't think it would have made much of a difference in this case. If you look at the way the chief suspect James Holmes booby-trapped his apartment it is clear that he has the ability to make home made explosives. Therefore if he'd been unable to get hold of guns the chances are he would have simply attacked the movie theatre with home made explosives or worse home made chemical weapons. This would have most likely killed even more people.

One of the details that have emerged though is that in the month prior to the shooting Holmes purchased some 6000 rounds of ammunition. Even for a soldier serving on the front-line in Afghanistan this is considered a lot. I also seem to remember that following April's mass shooting at a nursing school in Oakland California I made some comment about how despite having a vast number of illegally held firearms Britain manages to avoid this sort of mass shooting because the police focus on controlling the supply of bullets rather then the guns themselves. Since then sales of ammunition in the US has increased dramatically as in preparation for the 2012 Presidential election people on the political right have started rumours that if Barack Obama is elected for a second term he will pass legislation making it more difficult to buy bullets. I should point out that this is highly unlikely to be true because it simply wouldn't be workable in the US. The only reason that it works in the UK is because the gun control laws are so tight that with the possible exception of a .22 rifle round you have no lawful excuse to be in possession of even one bullet. In fact I only really mentioned it because I was a bit drunk and wanted to hear the sound of my own voice.

However thinking about it it might be possible to introduce some sort of alert system similar to money laundering controls. The way that works is that if you make a transaction above a certain amount (let's say USD10,000) the Inland Revenue Service (IRS) get alerted and you have to explain where you got the money from which is normally not a problem. Therefore it might be possible that if someone buys a large amount of ammunition the seller has to alert either the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive (ATF) or ideally local law enforcement so they can go and speak to the buyer. Obviously there are significant civil liberty issues but rather then harassing, arresting and confiscating ammunition off people who simply do a lot of target practice I'm thinking more of giving the local community the opportunity to intervene with someone who has just lost their job, just got divorced and just brought a lot of guns in order to provide them with mental health support before they go on a shooting rampage. Obviously the exact amount of ammunition that needs to be purchased to trigger an alert will have to change frequently in order to stop people beating the system.

Also it's worth pointing out that today (22/7/12) is the first anniversary of the bomb and mass shooting attacks in Norway. The way that Holmes' apartment was booby-trapped and the fact he warned police that it was booby-trapped makes me think that rather then attempting to kill police officers he was possibly trying to drag out his moment in the spotlight for as long as possible so it coincided with today's anniversary.