Jeffrey Zalles, the president of the Marin County, California chapter of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, penned an article for The Washington Post in which he suggests going after bullets rather than guns.

His first idea is to license buyers of ammunition: "This license would take the form of a photo ID, and obtaining it could be as easy as watching a video, answering some gun-safety questions, paying a small fee and passing a background check."

Suspecting that gun owners would be highly resistant at such a suggestion, he tried to provide a comfortable solution: don't have "big-government" issue the license, give the task to the NRA. After all, he argues, that "would simply represent a return to the organization's roots" of advancing marksmanship, promoting gun safety and providing arms training.

His second idea is to mark the shells: "All bullets could be stamped with a serial number, and stores could scan a buyer’s license and a barcode on the box. Since shell casings recovered at a crime scene could easily be traced back to stores and buyers, there would be a powerful incentive to see that bullets were handled responsibly."

The result of these measures, Zalles believes, would be rendering the guns in criminal hands useless. And though it wouldn't put an end to all gun violence, "thousands of lives would be saved every year," he said.

Zalles also doesn't believe this infringes on the rights of gun owners and argues that if something isn't done now, gun violence will simply get worse and worse to the point where a majority of fed-up and fearful Americans will reach their tipping point and realize they need to bend to strict gun-control measures and ultimately see the need to "rewrite or repeal the Second Amendment." His measures, he said, could prevent Americans from reaching that tipping point.

"A focus on ammunition wouldn’t infringe on the rights of law-abiding gun owners. Instead it would guarantee the protection of those rights — while saving many lives," Zalles concluded.