Wired‘s Danger Room has published an embarrassingly bad infographic and accompanying article in which Joanna Pearlstein tries to argue that if you want to stop gun violence, you need to start with bullets:
Guns don’t kill people; people don’t kill people; bullets kill people. As the nation debates, again, the best way to curb gun violence, many of the questions focus on the firearms themselves. But an equally important consideration is ammunition. Roughly 10 billion rounds are manufactured in the US each year, with a weight equal to two Titanics. More to the point, it’s enough bullets to pump 32 rounds into every man, woman, and child in America.
Actually, people do kill people, all the time, often without guns or bullets. When they do use guns to shoot bullets, it only takes a few rounds to commit a massacre. Bullets are not the bottleneck there.
On the other hand, it takes thousands of rounds to become a competent shooter. In fact, competitive shooters can go through tens of thousands of rounds per year. Competitive shooters kill no one.
No, start with air. Our analysis indicates they all use air.
Guns don’t kill people. People don’t kill people. Bullets don’t kill people. Kinetic energy kills people. Let’s ban kinetic energy.