‘High Cost of Gunfire’

So “The High Cost of Gunfire” elicits an editorial (Dec. 3). About time! Ah, but the high “costs for the tens of thousands of injuries that the easy availability of guns makes possible” could be financed by the very persons who use guns. How? By taxing each bullet that causes the costs of these injuries and deaths.

Everyone seems afraid of the gun lobby who fight any controls on the possession of guns. What is wrong with taxing each bullet used to fire a gun, just as we tax liquor and cigarettes? Is it not just another “sin tax” on an object that can kill or injure a person?

Let the guy who uses a gun bite the bullet he uses with his legal, or illegal, weapon pay a tax. If I had my druthers, I would make it a dollar on each bullet. Then the users will think twice before they fire a shot, let alone a lot of random ones. (This might deter all of those trigger-happy people who like to shoot holes in signs.)

Incidentally, the tax might leave a surplus which could be used towards our deficit.

HAROLD L. DITTMER

Los Angeles