Guilty on your predicted knee-jerk reaction. A person shot in a mass shooting is still a person shot who didn't need their life interrupted in that manner.
I still believe the best way to reduce gun violence is to just take away the guns, then require gun users to carry firearms licenses and register and insure their weapons for liability damage, just like cars, which kill even more people than firearms. Then invoke a Federal sales tax surcharge of $100 per bullet; the government will never have to raise taxes again. But I know confiscation won't work in this country, and I've already written my Senator with a rewritten Second Amendment. So I suppose I'll have to wait for whatever replaces the current united states for something more reasonable.
Yeah, the point isn't that victims of mass shootings are any less dead, just that mass shootings are rare enough to be a distraction from really useful approaches to gun violence.
Requiring insurance and making ammunition really expensive sounds clever, but ...
If there is an actual need for weapons for self-defense, you've just made it unaffordable to the people likely to need it most. If there really is no such need, good luck convincing folks of that (I know you know -- "confiscation won't work in this country" -- I'm just being thorough in my reasoning here), and if there is such a need, convincing people there isn't will be even harder.
Furthermore, with the bullet tax you make practicing prohibitive, so the people who do cough up the insurance premiums are going to be terrible shots and probably have unsafe bad habits if/when they do need to draw a weapon. Hello bystanders!
There's a certain appealing logic to the insurance idea -- after all, a weapon is a tool capable of creating major harm when used correctly or incorrectly. But I think making it expensive enough to do any good will count as an infringement of the second amendment, effectively saying only rich people can have guns. Then again, I'm not an expert on exactly which hairs can be split how many ways when it comes to the Constitution and regulation of arms -- obviously some restrictions are allowed.
Liability insurance for gun owners would only cover negligent and/or accidental firings which cause injury, with is probably just a small subset of people injured. Insurance generally will not cover in any way an intentional act, nor will it cover intentional acts committed by third parties, such as people who steal guns. Therefore, the actual coverage of insurance would be minimal. In addition, those gun owners who have home insurance would probably be covered for accidental or negligent discharges by their homeowners policy.
(no subject)
I still believe the best way to reduce gun violence is to just take away the guns, then require gun users to carry firearms licenses and register and insure their weapons for liability damage, just like cars, which kill even more people than firearms. Then invoke a Federal sales tax surcharge of $100 per bullet; the government will never have to raise taxes again. But I know confiscation won't work in this country, and I've already written my Senator with a rewritten Second Amendment. So I suppose I'll have to wait for whatever replaces the current united states for something more reasonable.
(no subject)
Requiring insurance and making ammunition really expensive sounds clever, but ...
If there is an actual need for weapons for self-defense, you've just made it unaffordable to the people likely to need it most. If there really is no such need, good luck convincing folks of that (I know you know -- "confiscation won't work in this country" -- I'm just being thorough in my reasoning here), and if there is such a need, convincing people there isn't will be even harder.
Furthermore, with the bullet tax you make practicing prohibitive, so the people who do cough up the insurance premiums are going to be terrible shots and probably have unsafe bad habits if/when they do need to draw a weapon. Hello bystanders!
There's a certain appealing logic to the insurance idea -- after all, a weapon is a tool capable of creating major harm when used correctly or incorrectly. But I think making it expensive enough to do any good will count as an infringement of the second amendment, effectively saying only rich people can have guns. Then again, I'm not an expert on exactly which hairs can be split how many ways when it comes to the Constitution and regulation of arms -- obviously some restrictions are allowed.
(no subject)