My contribution to the mass shooting discussion. Let’s try placing taxes on 2nd amendment products (guns, ammo, etc.) based on the number killed and wounded in the last, say, 100 days. For each person (or child) killed, add 10% each, and for each person (or child) wounded add 5% maybe? Seems reasonable, no? If no one is killed or injured in a mass shooting in the last 100 days, no taxes! Just leave it up to the manufacturers and gun owners to decide what they need to do to keep their taxes down. After all, they keep telling us they understand the problem better than anyone.

Maybe we use the proceeds for funding free mental healthcare for all? After all, that’s the current excuse for gun violence.

What would that look like? Well, using the handy list of mass shootings in the USA in 2022, we can work this out:

• 221 people were killed and 824 wounded in 191 mass shootings in the last 100 days.
• That means the tax right now for guns and ammo should be 6,330%.
• A typical .223 bullet, like the ones used in the AR-15, normally costs about $1.75. With the murder tax, those bullets would cost $110.78 each.

I think the problem would be fixed. Probably within 100 days. No other laws required.

Book

• Finished Interview with a biased Machine and started on The Spacecraft of Babel
• Made a cool cover

SBIRs

• Finish writing up RCSNN progress – done!

GPT-Agents

• 1:00 Librarian meeting about keyword search