It is appalling that our elected problem solvers in Congress believe it is their job to try to convince us that nothing would work to solve our epidemic of mass shootings, so why try. But it is probably true that it would be next to impossible to eliminate all the guns in circulation.
Once owned, a gun is a durable item that can last a lifetime or more. It can have a succession of ownership difficult to track. One commonality among most of the shooters seems to be the stockpiling of bullets. Bullets, unlike the guns themselves, are the consumables that need to be regularly resupplied.
Someone attempting to buy large quantities of pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient in meth production, is identified through a database and presumably denied the purchase. Along with trying to determine someone’s mental capacity to buy a weapon, if someone is attempting to accumulate large numbers of high-powered munitions from multiple sources over a short period of time, it seems reasonable to have that attempt reported. We may not be able, or even willing, to restrict the sale of arms, but are we willing and able to control the consumables?
Paul Zuckerman, Salt Lake City