SO! Been chatting to Jace the last hour or so about cops beating him but and we somehow came onto the subject of guns, and we had some great ideas about how to bring firearms back into Hathian in a controlled and orderly sense.

Essentially, the idea will restrict the number of guns in the city at any one time, and make them a valuable currency of sorts, hopefully bringing a new dimension to the whole criminal and gang roleplay.
...and I'm having trouble writing the next paragraph clearly, so I'm going to try

EDIT: ...also, if you can't be bothered reading, there's an example down the bottom that explains it so much better than the rest of this post...

Basics
Firearms have been a problem as long as I've been in Hathian; I think we've had two gun bans in my time and we're going through another now. Guns are obviously a big thing in RP; they're a real killer (yeah, pun...) and end scenes pretty quick, but they can also enhance some scenes. Sort of like marriage - can't live with her, can't live without her... though you probably could live without her, you just don't want to for whatever reason. Anyway, back on track, this concept will hopefully allow for limited gunplay and as I said above, possible create a new dimension for criminals and gangs to use weapons as currency.

The basics of the system are;

-There are a limited number of guns in circulation at any one time
-To obtain a gun, you need to purchase one from a designated arms dealer
-When a gun is sold or acquired, it will be logged by either a forum post or on a spreadsheet or something similar
-Guns can be stolen, given away, traded, etc - this would all be recorded on the above spreadsheet
-Guns may be confiscated by Police - corrupt Police may then elect to sell or otherwise return these to circulations, good Police may destroy them
-If a gun is in some way destroyed, it's gone!
-When the pre-determined amount of guns are in circulation, the arms dealer 'can't get any more stock'
-One a month a count is conducted of the amount of guns in/out of circulation and the arms dealer 'gets a new shipment' to bring the numbers back to the pre-elected number, or, if deemed necessary, that number can be increased or decreased as appropriate.

With that said, onto the specifics;

Arms Dealers
Arms Dealers will be independent and impartial regulators of firearms. They will have the out of character responsibility of keeping a limited number of guns in the den and recording when they do sell guns. In order to remain transparent and avoid any out of character issues, it may be prudent to have guns sold on a first come first serve basis with the 'new shipments' arriving on a set day every month.

Number of, and type of weapons in circulation
The number of weapons, and types of weapons in circulation would be determined by a GM and then fed down to the Arms Dealer/s. If someone wants a specific sort of a weapon, they may be allowed to order it, in which case the Arms Dealer will run it by the GM - if approved, it can be 'ordered' for next shipment, if not, the weapon will simply be 'unavailable'.

Keeping Track of Weapons
In order to keep track of weapons, every time a weapon is bought, it will be recorded on the forum. If that weapon is then seized by Police, stolen, traded, or otherwise changes possession, a post will be made by the previous owner to this effect. To maintain accurate records, posts should me made immediately after, or while the RP is taking place.

In character basis / storyline
I believe all roleplay effecting rules should have a storyline to govern them, and so I've devised this;
Given the extreme amounts of gun violence in Hathian, the Hathian Police has sought help from the local customs and border authorities, as well as the local state police who have agreed to run a massive crackdown on the illegal firearms trade. As such, almost no firearms are reaching Hathian, leaving very few options for gun runners. One of these is by small boat straight across the Golf of Mexico to Hathian Beach. Given the nature of the smuggling operation, it can only be completed once a month. This has created a very high demand for firearms and raised the prices dramatically.

Given the drop in gun crime due to the crackdown by local authorities, the small time operation remains undetected given there has been a huge decrease in weapons anyway.

How it works; an example
For the purpose of this example, it has been determined that 10 guns may be in play at any one time. 9 have already been sold by the Arms Dealer. Also for the purpose of this example, shipments arrive the 20th of every month.

Little Matsui decides he needs a gun to protect his kids, so he by whatever means finds out about Hathian's best Arms Dealer and Mexican Gun Runner, BeBe. Matsui contacts BeBe and arranges a meet, which goes smoothly, so Matsui gets himself a shiney new Glock. BeBe posts on the forum that she's sold a gun to Matsui.

BeBe is now out of guns until the 20th of the next Month.

Rabid decides he's sick of Jace and wants to shoot him, so he goes to BeBe who tells him she's out of guns until the 20th. That's not soon enough, so Rabid does some digging around and finds out that Matsui just bought a gun, so Rabid goes and finds Matsui who refuses man loving as a trade for his gun... so Rabid being Rabid just beats little Mats up and steals his precious Glock. Matsui posts on the forum that Rabid beat him up and stole his gun.

Rabid then goes and shoots Jace and subsequently gets caught by Hendrich who confiscates the gun. Rabid posts on the forum that Hendrich confiscated his gun.

Hendrich then goes and for whatever reason sells the gun to Jace. Hendrich posts on the forum that he sold the gun to Jace

Jace then shoots Rabid as revenge and the cops come and Kyben confiscates the gun. Jace posts on the forum that Kyben confiscated the gun.

Being a goody goody, Kyben destroys the gun. Kyben posts on the forum that the gun was destroyed and that closes the thread for that gun.

Now, over the course of the month, 2 other guns were destroyed. With the one Kyben destroyed, that's 3 (yay, third grade maths!)

20th of the month comes and BeBe tally's up that there are allowed to be 10 guns in existence and 3 were destroyed - BeBe then gets in her shipment from Mexico and there are 3 guns up for grabs. Rinse and Repeat.

Next month, Nadir decides that there's been too much gun violence, he reduces the number of guns in circulation to 5. If there are more than this around, BeBe doesn't get a shipment this month because the Mexican got nabbed by Customs... if there are too many guns floating around for too long, HPD mount an operation to raid houses and get some guns out of circulation.

Conclusion
Hopefully the example is clear enough to demonstrate the concept behind the whole firearms trade. I'd say we'd probably need a designated forum to be created to keep track of the guns, or a spreadsheet or something, but like I said to Jace, Nadir is techy and will be able to work something out. Else failing, a forum and a thread for each month would probably suffice.

Q&A
Couple of people asked questions about what happens if... so, I thought I'd try answer them here...

-Q1- What happens if someone goes inactive with a gun on them? It's then taken out of play.
-A1- Essentially yes, no hard loss that a gun is out of play for a bit, but if they're inactive for a good amount of time, say, two months, then the gun can be NPC recovered by Police or something similar and destroyed.

-Q1b- Who monitors whether the gun is inactive then?
-A1b- My vision is that there would be a 'Gun Trade' forum or something similar, with an individual post for each gun, this would be publicly viewable, so I'm sure someone would notice if there's been no movement on the tread for a month or two, there it can be looked into. Otherwise the arms dealer would be responsible for this.

-Q2- What is someone that doesn't actually have a gun, uses one
-A2- This would become a security issue and be dealt with by security staff as a form of powergaming or godmoding given the person doesn't legitimately have a gun IC, or just an issue of breaking the rules.

Would love to hear peoples opinions!
And sorry for being long winded!