From gun control to bullet control.

ITEM: The Los Angeles Times for April 11 commented: "After four years of George W. Bush, the notions that some people might be too dangerous or unstable to trust with a firearm or that assault weapons do not belong in civilized society are deader than a wild turkey in hunting season."

"Over the last four years," the editorial claimed, "the president and his congressional allies have repudiated or quietly eviscerated key gun laws and regulations. Now they are poised to shield firearms makers and sellers from nearly all damage claims when their products kill or maim.... Last year, Republican congressional leaders simply ran out the clock on the 10-year-old federal assault gun ban, refusing to even call a vote on renewing it despite steady popular support for the law. Bush, who once claimed that he supported the ban, refused to make so much as a phone call to his House or Senate allies to keep it alive. With it died the ban on domestically made ammunition clips with more than 10 rounds, a boon for any disgruntled employee, terrorist, or high school student who wants to mow down a crowd."

CORRECTION: Eroding Second Amendment protections will not cause gun crimes to fall, notwithstanding the wishes of the editors of the Los Angeles Times. While it may be cliche, it is still true: criminals willing to break laws against murder aren't likely to be deterred by more gun regulations.

The Times' reference to a high-school student is an attempt to ride the coattails of a shooting spree on the Red Lake Indian reservation in Minnesota. Yet, as reported in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, "the Red Lake scenario seemed to be beyond the reach of most gun-control proposals: child-safety-locks, background checks for gun-show sales and a ban on assault weapons. 'Everything that kid did that day, practically from the moment he walked out of his bedroom, was a felony,' said Joe Olson, a Hamline University law professor and president of the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance. 'I don't think any gun-control laws would have made a difference.'"

Meanwhile, even the New York Times has admitted that the end of the misnamed assault-weapons ban changed little. "Despite dire predictions that the streets would be awash in military-style guns, the expiration of the decade-long assault weapons ban last September has not set off" a sustained surge in the weapons' sales, gun makers and sellers say," reported the paper on April 24. "It also has not caused any noticeable increase in gun crime in the past seven months, according to several metropolitan police departments."

If anything, well-publicized gun crimes have fueled a growing movement to allow concealed handguns for protection. Since 2003, five states have approved laws permitting people to carry concealed weapons, raising the total to 35. Violent crime rates are 24 percent lower in states where there are concealed-carry laws, according to one study.

Of course, the gun-grabbers won't quit. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a major proponent of the assault-weapon ban, still insists that the legislation was "working," in part because the price of certain weapons was driven up. She is sponsoring a bill to bring back the ban. Other would-be controllers would outlaw even more weapons and magazines.

Always an incubator for radical ideas, California has come up with another way to help disarm its citizens. Democratic leaders in the Golden State, led by Attorney General Bill Lockyer, are pushing a new plan that would code bullets! As reported in the San Diego Union-Tribune: "No other state or country has attempted to set up a system to tag and track ammunition. Under Lockyer's proposal, the bullet or slug in each cartridge would be microstamped with a serial number during the manufacturing process. Ammunition would be packaged in boxes carrying the same code and the purchaser's identity would be recorded with the swipe of a driver's license."

Should this boondoggle be imposed, it would soon prove to be insufficiently effective, in part because criminals could easily obtain unmarked ammunition (which would cause proponents to demand that such a law be mandated on a federal level). Along the way, the scheme would require a costly bureaucracy and drive ammunition prices through the roof--for the law-abiding, that is.