I'm trying to think of the ramifications of a hypothetical scenario:
Everyone on earth, at the age of 18, gets a single-use gun. There are no other guns in the world except for the gun you are issued. Every gun is tied to your fingerprint, so no firing anyone else's gun. The gun can only be fired once, it only can fire the bullet it came with, it cannot be reloaded, and you never get another one.
The law says you can do whatever you want with the gun and the bullet with no consequences. If you want to use your one and only bullet to kill your boss, you can. If you want to use it to kill your spouse, you can. If you want to use it to kill yourself, go right ahead. You just never get another one, ever.
I can think of a few things offhand
- The concept of guns as a hobby goes away. Can't collect guns if they're all the same. Can't go shoot target practice because there's no ammo to be had/used
- Mass shootings go away but if you kill someone now you're a target for everyone else. Kill your boss and his spouse could return the favor, as could your spouse to their spouse, and then your boss' kid when he turns 18 could kill your widow. Eye for an eye leaves everyone blind, etc.
- Crime becomes weird. Armed robbery might go away since what are the odds that someone is going to threaten to use their one bullet just to grab some cash? For that matter, if killing someone with your one bullet is legal, is threatening to shoot them legal?
- Guns would no longer be a factor in games or movies. I mean, I haven't decided if there's a historical context or if it's always been this way but no modern day buddy cop movie involves a shootout. Maybe in a sci-fi movie there's still laser pistols.
Anyway if you could wave a wand and then suddenly everyone has a gun but only one bullet (or if there was a story taking place in a world where this has been true far back as one can remember) would be be some ramifications of this notion compared to what we have now? Could society function, and would it be better or worse?
UPDATE: Hey guys, I thought this would be an interesting question, something along the lines of the if you could kill people with your mind type of question. It was an idea I had a while back and I thought this might be a way to explore it. It appears that a number of people don't agree and I may have misunderstood something about this SE or the question is insufficient in some way. Feel free to delete it.