A Governmental Gun Part I
In 2060, the United States finally decided to address its overpopulation problem, but after decades of supporting its consumer-driven ideals, there was little time to implement a program similar to that of China or Indonesia, which had seen success over three generations of families thanks to tax breaks that encouraged smaller families. The US had to try something a little more drastic, and it helped that they had recently become a dictatorship.
The revolution that brought about Communist rule in the US had been a popular one. Voters lost patience with democracy’s lack of results; the system stepped on the toes of progress, and when Joseph Carlsbad began his nationwide tour, accompanied by a growing number of open-minded Scientologist celebrities, the country jumped at an opportunity for radical change. His campaign, which took place in the spring of a non-voting year, brought about substantial change while only the most minimal of force was needed to overtake the standing government.
The United States finally decided that a population of almost 2 billion was a cause for drastic change. The country’s unemployment rate was at an all-time high and the hungry mouths were getting restless. To prevent total anarchy, Carlsbad implemented a program unlike any other. The Governmental Gun went into effect on July 4th, 2061. Carlsbad explained it in a nationally-televised speech.
“On this day that we remember the great sacrifices of our past countrymen, we will embark on a sacrifice of our own. I am implementing a bill called the Governmental Gun tomorrow morning to address our overpopulation situation. Each citizen will be issued a pistol with a single bullet. Each bullet has a built-in number which will act as a signature. Everyone who is issued a bullet will be given one free murder. I’m not here to debate the morals or minuses of this mandate. You didn’t put me in this position to deliberate. This is a mandate. Take it seriously because it will take you seriously. When you pick up your gun, there will be a rule book. Not everyone will be issued a gun. You will receive a letter in the mail if you are being issued one.”
The lines were a week long, wrapped around the block numerous times. There were staffing issues, not enough people to meet the overwhelming demand for murder. Even Carlsbad was a little surprised with just how warm the reception was to his mandate. He thought for sure he would have to force at least a portion of the population to comply, but it seemed the thought of being the only one without a gun was too much for most.
And that was another problem. Impostors. Nearly half the people in lines across the country never received the official letter and thus were not to be issued a gun, but they still tried, forging documents with photocopies, stealing the letters of others, thinking they were so sly in their methods. What they didn’t realize was that the problems of forged documents had already been addressed; everything was based on DNA identification, and those posing as others were dealt with aggressively and publicly. After the first day, the lines began to thin out from the rear forward.
The criteria for those who would be issued a free murder were complicated. Qualifications included being between the ages of eighteen and thirty, in good health, and in college. Even those in the line did not necessarily receive a gun. The letter was more like an invitation for a job interview. After a month, once the majority of the guns and their respective “one bullets” were issued, the murder rate began to climb. There were vengeance killings, mercy killings, dead celebrities, dead former-presidents that made up almost ninety percent of the early murders.
Carlsbad was never afraid for his own life, even with so many current and former influential people being eliminated. He lived like a king in an impenetrable castle built on the ruins of the White House he had destroyed as a symbol of the new and improved country. No one near him was issued a Governmental Gun. He wore special clothes developed from the latest in body armor technology. He lived in a box within a box, a room within a room, based off of the old Jewish temples described in the Old Testament. No one but him could enter the third, innermost room.
He rarely left his castle.
But the murders began to plateau. The rates reached equilibrium. There were no more celebrities to kill, no more ex-leaders to murder, and the rest of the population, roughly 200 million people, who still had their free murders were saving them.
This puzzled Carlsbad, who felt he had drawn up a system that could not fail. After years of studying humanity, the intricacies of its interpersonal relations, he had found that throughout history people had a lust for survival, and that when faced with the prospect of danger, humans, for their majority, would kill their way out of trouble. If two people were placed in a room, and each had a gun, then instead of the two of them concentrating on how to get out of the room, their focus would be on the guns in each other’s hands. He had even done his own tests on the matter, grabbing citizens off the streets and placing them in similar situations, and almost all tests proved his theories correct.
Two of his test subjects had taken a peculiar approach, however. The subjects sat in the room, staring at each other after they had discussed their predicament for days. They sat and stared and starved to death. Carlsbad dismissed the test under the belief that if more variables, namely more people and more guns, were brought into the equation, then this problem would solve itself. And death was death. And less people was what the country needed most.
Because of this, Carlsbad could see no reason why, under any circumstances, his Governmental Gun proclamation could be unsuccessful. He weighed the pros and cons of implementing something new that would give the people more of an incentive to use their free murders, but Carlsbad knew that if he did, the people would think that he had failed, just like the government before him. A major reason why he had gained power in the first place was democracy’s inability to implement a solution to a problem. The people were tired of excuses and programs that spent more and more money on problems that were not getting resolved. Carlsbad wanted to resolve his own problems.
This would be the time when most leaders would bring in their private counsel, people trusted in high places, generals and so forth, that could provide some help with the dilemma, but there were no seconds or thirds-in-charge. If nothing else, a dictator fears the loss of his power, and Carlsbad was notorious for his paranoia in that regard. He ran everything. Each department was governed by groups, not individuals. That way he could have spies watching spies. There would never be enough trust among them to attempt any revolt.
And each group reported to him.
With a plateau in the murder rate, the overpopulation problem became more and more volatile. Carlsbad, and the country, found themselves in the ultimate conundrum.
Forty, fifty years ago, political activism had been so vogue. “Being green” was a matter of being cool. Using less electricity, wasting less water, driving more efficient cars, these were the ways that people believed we could preserve the ecosystem. But everything’s relative, and as the population doubled and tripled, and some people used a little less oil, it became obvious, at least to some, that the math was simple; there were too many people. And in a country like America, a country that for decades had been using more than half of the world’s resources by itself, time was up. Acid rain storms were destroying crops. Gas prices doubled almost every year which put the economy in doldrums it hadn’t seen since the Depression more than a century ago.
These were the circumstances that allowed Joseph Carlsbad to gain power, in much the same way as Hitler and Mussolini and Castro before him. He knew this. Carlsbad had been a history major in college, before he dropped out and began campaigning. Even though he had no hidden agenda, like killing Jews, he was sure that the American public would see the similarities making it much more difficult for him to reach power and implement the drastic changes he felt the country needed.