For those of us who live in countries where bearing firearms is considered important, today’s invention is an attempt to limit the damage that gun proliferation causes.
The idea is simply to put less propellant into bullets you can buy legally. When you browse for your favourite .44 magnum cartridges at Death-R-Us, you will be able to buy only bullets which look completely normal, but which have had their gunpowder or cordite propellant ‘cut’ with something more benign, like talcum powder.
This will still allow people to enjoy owning all that phallic symbolism and making a loud bang, but prevent them from drilling unnatural holes in each other. In fact, I’d suggest that the propellant be reduced so as to allow all ammo to deliver non-lethal impacts, even at arm’s length -enough for property owners to defend their houses/wives from assailants, but not enough to allow driveby’s, armed robbery, school sieges or assassination. I’m talking about delivering an amount of energy equivalent to a medium strength hammer blow, so that even determined bad guys will be keen to re-evaluate their whole approach.
Criminals will then be faced with massively increased prices for ammunition which has had to be illegally imported or made by hand (a hazardous procedure). Recreational hunters? They really ought to know better. Shooting at animals will only be a sport when the animals get to shoot back.
