There’s an interesting comment by DLee4144 on the Jeff Danziger cartoon of 18th December 2012:

It’s totally true that guns don’t kill people, or at least rarely – about the only way you can kill someone with a gun is to beat them to death with it.

There is no point in outlawing guns.  They are out there, there are millions, they are made of metal and will last for a thousand years if they are kept oiled.  Failing that, I could find materials in my basement that would produce a workable gun, and it doesn’t take much knowledge of the subject to figure out how to do it.

BULLETS on the other hand, are time consuming to make and require specific equipment.  Production of enough to do serious damage would require planning and patience that are not characteristic of those who shoot up elementary schools.  And, working on such a project might attract the attention of someone sane.

Bullets can be individually stamped, and their sale can be registered and entered into a computer base.  They can be tracked from production to use, so that every bullet can be traced back to the person who purchased it.  This way, a guy who wants to buy a couple boxes of bullets to go shoot deer, or the woman who wants a box to keep with the gun in her bedside drawer, won’t set off any warning bells.  But the guy who is buying an arsenal will attract attention before he finds a more lethal way to do it.

Now there’s an interesting idea: unique identification of bullets.  That would be inconvenient for all sorts of gun-related bad behaviour.  Including mercenary activity.