At least 20 reasons for a new gun tax It is a rare corporate press release that inspires the reader. But such was the case this week when I perused a statement issued by the private equity group Cerberus Capital Management. Cerberus said it would try to sell the Freedom Group, a collection of leading firearms and ammunition companies that includes Bushmaster, maker of the military-style rifle that Adam Lanza used last week to kill 26 people, including 20 children, at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Cerberus said it was "shocked and deeply saddened by the events." But it also described itself as having made a "financial investment" in Freedom six years ago, and that got me thinking. For those who do not speak the lingo of Wall Street, investors can be classified in various ways. "Strategic" investors have a background in the businesses in which they invest; by contrast, "financial" investors just want a return. By putting itself in the latter category, it seemed to me that Cerberus was saying it still did not see itself as a gunmaker even though it had owned many of the biggest names in the business for years; for all the private equity group cared, it might as well have been involved in the production of lollipops or lingerie. The ability to think in this way helps to explain why people on Wall Street make the big bucks. It is not necessarily because they know so much; it is because their focus is so narrow. Where other people see a semi-automatic rifle capable of killing 20 children in a matter of minutes, they see a cash flow. The presence of a Cerberus in the business of selling killing machines such as the one that Lanza used suggests there is a pretty penny to be made in this trade. Otherwise, the "financial" folks would be somewhere else - and that has clear implications for Americans looking for ways to keep their children safe. As I read the Cerberus statement, it occurred to me that we need a sanctions regime that will make it less profitable to sell weapons of mass destruction to civilians. We should impose new, heavy taxes on the sale of every military-style rifle, every automatic handgun, every 30-round magazine, and - if legal experts say it is possible - every Ted Nugent concert ticket, compact disc and eight-track tape (on the grounds he can be seen as the Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad of the gun-clown set). The policy could be designed to keep the hunters happy. The goal would be to discourage the mass production and aggressive marketing of weapons that can kill large numbers of people in a short time. We don't need a business that produces the kind of results we saw in Newtown. By focusing on the profitability of this weapons trade, gun-control advocates would also be able to avoid a big historical obstacle: the US constitution. Its poorly-edited second amendment reads: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Americans have long argued about what this means. For my part, I have trouble seeing how a well-regulated militia has a place for a twisted soul such as Lanza, or for that matter, his late mother, who made sure that there was plenty of whizz-bang weaponry in the home that she shared with a disturbed child. But other people disagree and I suspect that enough of them wear robes at work to make my thoughts on this question irrelevant. I would just refer gun-control advocates to the part of the constitution that can be their friend: article I, section 8. It says: "The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises." I don't see where guns or ammunition are excluded. There would be no shortage of good uses for the revenue raised. Given the precarious fiscal situation of the US, I imagine some of the money would inevitably be put toward reducing the federal budget deficit. But it would only be right to use some of the funds to help the victims of gun violence and their families, to buy back guns that are in circulation, or to provide mental health services to all those disturbed young men who seem to be festering in our suburban basements. As for the level of the gun tax, if I had my way, it would be crippling - 100 per cent, or 1,000 per cent, of the purchase price of the kind of rifle Lanza used. But again, I can't see that happening. A more practical suggestion would be to start the additional tax at 20 per cent - 20 for the 20 children who died.