Bill Watkins: Taxing bullets won't reduce gun crime


By BILL WATKINS / For the Register

Bill Watkins: Taxing bullets won't reduce gun crime

image0-Bill Watkins: Taxing bullets won't reduce gun crime

After the tragic Newtown massacre, there are lots of proposals to regulate guns and ammunition. I'd like to look at two proposed ammunition regulations from an economic prospective.

Taxing bullets: The principle is simple: If you want less of something, tax it. So it is with bullets. If you want fewer bullets, tax them. But that's not what the policy people really want. They want fewer crimes committed with guns. Unfortunately, taxing bullets probably won't accomplish this because bullets are the least expensive part of the costs of gun crime.

First, some facts and assumptions: About 65 percent of murders are solved, and the average sentence is about 25 years. However, few serve the entire sentence. So, let's use 10 years as the typical amount of time a murderer can expect to serve in prison. Let's assume that our murderer earns $50,000 a year when he's not in prison, and he values life outside of prison at another $50,000 per year. The cost of a year in prison for this person is $100,000. The cost to him of 10 years is $1,000,000. The cost of the murder is the probability of the murder being solved times the cost of the prison term, $650,000 in this example. The costs of the gun and ammunition are trivial compared to the other costs. They are so small that they will not enter the decision.

Banning hollow-point bullets: Hollow-point bullets are used by police departments, hunters and individuals. The bullets are designed to expand when they hit something. The expansion increases the size of any wound and increases the probability that the hit is a fatal hit. But that is not the only reason people use them.

When the hollow-point bullet expands, it uses up much of its energy. This reduces its lethality after it penetrates something. This is in contrast to the full-metal-jacketed bullet which retains its shape and energy as it passes through obstacles. That is, the hollow-point bullet reduces the risk of over penetration. So, a homeowner might prefer the hollow-point not necessarily because of its increased lethality, but because it reduces the probability of hurting or killing someone behind the target.

What are the economics of banning hollow-point bullets? The full-metal-jacketed bullet sells for about 30 cents a round during normal markets. A hollow-point bullet normally sells for a dollar or more per round. If a murderer was anticipating using hollow-point bullets, but is forced by law to use the cheaper full-metal-jacket bullet, the cost of a murder goes down a very small amount. The costs to society, though, will probably go up. For one thing, there will be more bullets flying around if hollow-point bullets are banned.

The proposed regulations do nothing to impact the cost of crime, and therefore will have no impact on crime rates. By contrast, the societal costs of banning hollow-point bullets could be very high.

Bill Watkins is executive director of the California Lutheran University Center for Economic Research and Forecasting.



Join the conversation

Comments are encouraged, but you must follow our User Agreement
