You’ve heard it before – “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people - but the gun makes it easier than having to throw the bullet.” The Second Amendment to the Constitution states, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” In recent years, I’ve begun to suspect this was actually written on that list of Commandments Charlton Heston brought down from the Mount and then presented to the NRA for their charter.

I am against guns. I don’t think people who like them are deranged or morally deficient, but I’ve had too much first hand experience seeing what they can do to feel comfortable around them, especially when they are in the hands of someone who is either deranged or morally deficient. On the other hand, I believe in the U.S. Constitution and, generally, feel it should be amended only under most extreme circumstances, like when we want to protect the rights of all Americans or ban gay marriage. So, I’ve come up with an idea I feel supports the NRA’s right to own all the guns they want and, at the same time, help reduce the harm guns do.

Let’s require that each and every bullet be registered. (All right, I am at least sensible enough to recognize that outlawing bullets probably isn’t realistic.) And by “registered,” I mean going through all the paperwork one has to wade through when buying a car.

Now, in order to make this work, each bullet would have to be stamped with a Bullet Identification Number (BIN) so it can be uniquely identified. I suggest stamping the BIN on both the metal slug (i.e., that little part that tends to cause the actual damage when someone is shot) and on the end of the cartridge surrounding the primer.

This approach has several benefits. First, having to fill out a ream of paperwork for each bullet (and, no, there should not be any facility for registering an entire box of bullets with a single registration) would probably be so daunting that many people who want to own a gun would probably end up taking the Barney Fife route and only carry one bullet for their gun.

In most states, there is something akin to a “transfer” tax whenever a car is sold. Adding such a tax to bullets would be a new source of government revenue.

Having the BIN on the cartridge would allow improved crime solving whenever someone is shot. Have you ever noticed how many cartridges the CSI teams end up finding and marking at the scene of a shooting in all those television shows? Unless the shooter takes the time (and is smart enough) to pick up all the spent cartridges after shooting someone, the BINs on the recovered cartridges could be traced to the person who registered the bullets used in the shooting.

When the metal slug is removed from a shooting victim, chances are pretty good that most, if not all, of the BIN could still be intact. This could serve as pretty solid evidence in court linking the person who registered the bullet to the shooting.

Finally, criminals who plan to use a gun in a crime sometimes file the registration number off the gun. Presumably, they might also try to file the BINs off the bullets they plan to use. Since one of the BINS would be stamped ringing the primer, doing so would cause the criminal to entertain the risk of the bullet exploding while he is filing off the BIN. But, hey, I’m okay with someone who intends to commit a crime causing themselves bodily harm before they can hurt someone else.