Bullet Control

The gun control debate has raged for decades, producing policy papers, protests, and precisely nothing in the way of change. Chris Rock solved it in thirty seconds.

"You don't need no gun control. You know what you need? We need some bullet control. We need to control the bullets. I think all bullets should cost five thousand dollars. Five thousand dollars for a bullet."

The premise is absurd. That's the point. Rock isn't proposing actual legislation—he's using absurdity to highlight the absurdity of the status quo. We regulate guns but not their purpose. We argue about background checks while ignoring that the fundamental problem is dead people.

"If a bullet cost $5,000, there'd be no more innocent bystanders. Every time somebody got shot, you'd say, 'Damn, he must've done something. He got fifty thousand dollars worth of bullets in his ass.'"

The specificity makes it land. Not "expensive bullets"—five thousand dollars. Not "shot multiple times"—fifty thousand dollars worth. Rock gives us numbers to hang onto, turning abstract violence into economic calculation.

The bit continues: "People would think before they shot someone. 'Man, I would blow your fucking head off—if I could afford it. I'm gonna get me another job, start saving some money, and you're a dead man. You better hope I can't get no bullets on layaway.'"

It's Swift's "A Modest Proposal" for the hip-hop era. The joke isn't the solution; the joke is that we don't have one. Rock makes gun violence funny and in doing so makes our inaction on it feel absurd. If we can laugh at this, why can't we fix it?