A Modest Proposal for Resolution of the Gun Control Controversy

The title of course alludes to Jonathan Swift’s essay, “A Modest Proposal for the Relief of the Famine in Ireland”.  Composed at the height of one of Ireland’s many famines, it was a savage satire in the form of a proposal that the Irish sell their most plentiful crop, their babies, for consumption by the English, who thought of the Irish as barely more than farm animals, in exchange for food.  My proposal is both less savage and more modest.  Whether you take it seriously or treat it as satire depends on you.  It merely relies on a common tool of laissez-faire capitalism to resolve the stormy gun control controversy.  My proposal is akin to a currently active immigration program enacted in 1990 by a Republican Congress and signed by George H. W. Bush and designed to cater to the wealthy, but it satisfies the Democratic goal of strong reduction in the availability of firearms, as it helped reduce immigration, so it should be welcomed by all.

The 1990 program was the EB-5 visa-for-dollars which set up 10,000 permanent residency visas per year granted to foreign applicants in exchange for investment in U.S. businesses.  The immigration quota line could be jumped to the front of immediately merely by a $500,000 investment.  What a deal! Oh, there are moral issues, but privileges to the wealthy always seem to bring those along.  My proposal doesn’t even have so many of those.  The wealthy benefit, but it's for the good of all of us.

I propose that private ownership and/or carrying of guns be prohibited unless the person bearing the weapon has a government permit to do so issued in strictly limited numbers and sold to the highest bidder or at an exorbitant price, say $500,000 or more. Possibly it could be marketed as a kind of tax on the wealthy.  Large corporations could purchase them for the bodyguards of the CEO, and paranoid billionaires could be reassured that not only do they have a weapon, but no angry pauper can afford to own one to use against them.  The NRA and gun manufacturers might object to the loss in sales volume, but they could compensate by raising the price of weapons to a level commensurate with their customers' ability to pay.  Profit and market share are what counts!

Perhaps 10,000 permits a year might be issued that way, with an equal number issued on a first-come first-served basis, perhaps with state-by-state quotas.  That way, the right to bear arms would not be affected, only the waiting time to get one.  If properly restricted in number, the first-come first-served permits might produce a waiting line of up to 20 years – just as in immigration - long enough to cool off the hottest urge to grab a gun and shoot someone. 

It would be laissez-faire capitalism at its finest.  Only the wealthy could really afford a weapon, and they are no harm to anybody.