Query: What happens if we go to mandatory gun insurance, such that non-insured guns are confiscated?
Premiums based on the measurable negatives caused by that type of gun, maybe indexed to your region and personal profile.
You want a handgun? That's fine. There are 100 (or whatever) handguns in your area, one handgun related death, 20 handgun related non-lethal shootings. That's a cost of 1 million + 20 * 100,000, so three million as the immediately measurable cost. There's 100 handguns, so that's 30,000 per license. One license per gun.
Pay your premium before you can buy a gun.
How tenable is such a solution? Does this make any sense?
Ground Rules: Civility. I'll delete anything I choose, including this post.
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Oh, also: pay that again next year for each gun, of course. Or else they become uninsured and will be confiscated if a cop / insurance company figures it out.
ReplyDeleteIt's a fine idea until you realize it's fundamentally classist.
ReplyDelete"You have the right to bear arms...as long as you can afford the insurance" pretty much means only people with means will have legal weapons.
And since class and race are so tightly intertwined, the implications of that become bad quickly. It's not hard to imagine the War on Uninsured Guns quickly becoming the next War on Drugs...aka a license to lock up non-white people.
Guns are already pretty classist in that even modest ones tend to cost more than a month's worth of rent.
ReplyDeleteI would have said that the greater issue would be that nobody below the 1% could afford those kinds of rates and there are many-many people below the 1% who currently own guns for reasons like hunting (which can be quite reasonably considered to be low risk if they adhere to basic safety).
Ralph Mazza Instead, those harms now are passed from gun owners to non-gun owners. That seems at least as immoral.
ReplyDeleteLet's take this to the next step. As I said, we could index the cost of insurance based on your profile. Maybe all the gun violence is being done by rich white men, in which case their insurance premiums would be much higher.
In this way, you only pay the insurance premium based on the risk you actually present. If your profile is low-risk, your premium would go down.
Its the same reason women pay less on car insurance than do 17 year old boys; they get in fewer accidents.
(The car insurance thing is mostly linked to age, not sex.)
ReplyDeleteEva Schiffer (you're probably right. I remember mine being higher than my sisters when we were teenagers. I no longer have car insurance, so that's a bit outside my knowledge zone. Thank you for putting this into parenthesis: the point I was going for was cost based on risk assessment.)
ReplyDeleteEva Schiffer Right, and I can absolutely see having lower rates for completing training, owning a safe, etc. Because all those things make the chance of something terrible happening less, so you'd be in a lower risk pool.
ReplyDelete(also, the assault rifle premium is going to be different from the pistol premium is different from the bolt action rifle premium is different from the bbgun premium ... )
ReplyDeleteWilliam: Do you have ideas about who would be choosing how to slice the data, in order to create profiles? I worry that "appeal to data" has tended to reinforce classism and racism in the past (see "redlining", and the criminal difference between "crack" and "cocaine," both nominally crafted out of a concern for the data).
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch That is a really interesting thought. I don't know.
ReplyDeleteYou may be right. I hope that the raw profit motive of a company would mean that companies slicing the data in an illegitimate fashion would be counterproductive, but I don't know!
For most other kinds of insurance that is limited now by the government telling them that they can't legally use certain things (like race) to impact premiums. You still get secondary effects like where you live affecting your rate (and correlating with poverty).
ReplyDeleteEva Schiffer That's true, insurance is imperfect. Is it better than what we do now? (I'm ever the incrementalist. Not sure when that happened.)
ReplyDeleteSince I don't respect this civil right, it's hard for me to worry about, say, poor people not getting it. I think removing this right from people makes them safer. But that's not tenable policy.
ReplyDeleteI'm not going to make a lot of value judgments on the current insurance industry... shrugs
ReplyDeleteI do think Robert Bohl is right in that something like this won't be tenable unless you make some really serious culture changes to how most people view guns and their role in society.
- who does the insurance pay out to? Is it a liability policy covering only the insured guns or is it a general fund for victims of guns?
ReplyDelete- if this is a liability policy and I'm shot by an uninsured gun, how am I covered?
- how do you verify compliance on the millions of guns currently in circulation?
William Nichols except I don't think you get incrementally better.
ReplyDeleteWhat you get is all the white militia types continuing to do what they're going to do without being hassled, and only on the rare occasion when they act up enough to get rousted does "uninsured firearm" charges get added on.
You get gated communities getting a pass and when one of their guns is used in a crime and they're found to be uninsured, they get wrist slapped (it's highly unlikely that uninsured firearm laws get enforced against rich white people any harder than DUI laws...or rape laws).
And then you'll get squads of tactical troopers executing no-knock warrants in minority urban areas because they got an anonymous tip that someone in the building was seen with a gun...that one time, three years ago.
It's not a question of how you hope the law will work.
It's a question of: based on reality -- how is this law going to be used to justify screwing the urban poor even more.
My prediction: Implement mandatory gun insurance and for every 1 white dude who pays a fine, there'll be half a dozen blacks and Hispanics shot during the course of executing a search and seizure.
Agree with Ralph: The current reality is not, in fact, "Free use of guns for everyone." It's "Free use of guns for those at the top of the kyriarchy, and their chosen foot-soldiers."
ReplyDeleteI wish I thought a profit motive could change that, but there's plenty of profit to be had pitching reasonably priced mortgages to minorities, and nobody's doing that.
John Aegard General fund for victims of guns is along the lines of what I was thinking. You get shot, you get an immediate payout. You get shot and killed, your next of kin gets an immediate payout. If you're all dead, somebody gets a payout and I'm not quite sure who yet.
ReplyDeleteIf you're shot by an uninsured gun, then the same thing. The amount of money needed for premiums isn't tracked to the number of insured guns, it is tracked to the gun damage. As the number of insured guns goes up, if violence stays the same, then the insurance per gun goes down.
Verification: That's really tricky. Its why I said confiscation of non-insured guns.
Take my uncle with the AK47 as an example. He's not about to register it, much less pay insurance. So, under this, his gun would be subject to confiscation if any cop / insurance agent ever sees it.
Eva Schiffer As this very post has proved, this sort of idea is way outside the window of the acceptable. Which is weird, as all this really meant is reducing negative externalities. Which sounds like a plus to me.
ReplyDeleteI would probably not payout for uninsured guns, but rather allow people to buy uninsured gun insurance. That's how we handle cars and the other way around has... well, not so great economic incentives.
ReplyDeleteRalph Mazza You assume a lot. Like that the cops have quite so much to do with this.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking more insurance investigators, with cops there to confiscate guns, sure. But, most of the work finding and eliminating them would be done by the people with skin in the game -- the insurance companies. if they are paying out serious cash for gun deaths, they have a huge incentive to stop gun deaths. From any source.
You're also assuming this'd be a charge. That's not what I'm talking about at all. In particular, this is meant to be a civil offense -- and the punishment is losing your gun. That means you don't get troopers, because it isn't a criminal offense.
Also, all of your positions work just as well against getting rid of guns altogether. Or booze. Or, really, anything at all. Do you think we shouldn't have laws because they'll be used to screw the urban poor?
To be clear. I don't find it outside of the acceptable at all. I think it's a great idea. But like many great ideas there is a whole lot of broken systematic bullshit that would need to addressed before it could be implemented.
ReplyDeleteBecause if you don't, then your great idea just becomes another twisted tool of injustice; and the resultant unintentional consequences far outweigh any reduction in negative externalities.
Ralph Mazza Yeah, I've got to fundamentally disagree with something that's really important. That is, I don't think we need to fix all the broken crazy crap before we start working on the crap we can fix now.
ReplyDeleteThat is, we don't need to have a minimum basic income before we can reduce the size of the military. The two are unconnected; we can work both fronts at once, looking for small ways to improve. That's the idea here: get gun owners, rather than the rest of us, to pay for the damage they cause.
Eva Schiffer Can you expand? My knowledge of how car insurance works isn't super great.
ReplyDeleteI would think that if you only payout for insured guns, then there's a much higher burden to get a payout. And dickering over which company holds that gun, etc. That seems like it puts a lot of work on the people who were just the victims of violence. What'm I missing?
I'm worried about suicides, which are all too often done by gun. If you shoot yourself, then we can't have the insurance payout to your family -- that's a standard problem in life insurance and the whole point of Its A Wonderful Life. Maybe that goes to some sort of counseling fund, but I dunno.
See, that...that doesn't work at all in a functional way. Guy gets shot in the street. He gets a payout. From who? "The insurance company"? Which one. Guns involved in crimes already get confiscated. Who pays the fine?
ReplyDeleteIt's not like there's a big database of gun FIN numbers that will trace that AK-47 back to your uncle. So somebody stole it from him...used it in a crime...and what...there's no policy, there's no insurance company, there's no payout. Who pays? Some randomly selected insurance company who has nothing to do with any of it?
That's not how insurance works. What you're talking about is me as a non gun owner purchasing a gun violence rider on my insurance policy that pays me if I get gunned down in the street...and then subsidizing that by finding a way to charge gun owners. It's the injured parties that need to be covered, not the gun owner or user.
Most responsible gun owners of means should already have an umbrella liability policy covering themselves if they're found to be negligent. That's already standard for anyone who can afford it even if you don't own a gun (it's not that much...couple hundred bucks a year...if you don't have one you should).
Ralph Mazza Why do you assume there is a fine? I'm pretty sure I said the only fine was losing your gun?
ReplyDeleteSo you can't legally drive without car insurance, but clearly people do drive without car insurance anyway sometimes. If they hit someone they're in trouble for both not having insurance and whatever costs they've placed on the person they hit (fixing their car, medical bills, etc.). But the uninsured person may have no money to pay those costs, so that's kinda academic to the person who needs money to pay their medical bills.
ReplyDeleteYou can buy insurance that insures you against being hit by uninsured drivers (it varies by state how it is handled and whether it is required for drivers to buy it, most places it isn't, but you don't buy it at your own risk). If you have uninsured driver insurance and an uninsured driver hits you then your insurance pays you instead of theirs (since they have none to pay you).
I wouldn't say it is a great system, especially since gun damage isn't limited to people who drive, but at least the economic incentives are going in the right direction to get people to treat the rest of the system functionally.
Eva Schiffer Huh. What about pedestrians that are hit by uninsured drivers? Like, I don't have car insurance because I don't have a car. So, I have no uninsured motorist insurance. This sounds like it is still limited to people who drive, which in the analogy are gun owners. (And, well, that's not a terrible analogy in any case.)
ReplyDeleteBut in general, heck yeah, insurance is a liability shield such that your assets are protected in the case of a mistake. That's the general idea of insurance: pooling resources so that a mistake does not destroy any one person.
Making non-gun owners pay for gun insurance would be equivalent to non-drivers paying for uninsured motorist insurance. Which ... I don't think is a thing. When I last tried to buy car insurance for just this reason, it was impossible; I had to first own a car.
What about pushing the costs to the manufacturer? Gun companies have been wildly successful in the Obama era and taxing them could be simpler than ensuring compliance across 300MM USAians.
ReplyDeleteCreate a "firearms victims fund" by taxing gun companies. Contributions to this fund vary with how often the company's products are used to murder humans. If your company designs or manufactures a gun that's popular with human hunters, your company pays more. Make it more profitable to sell bolt-action rifles and pump-action shotguns than to sell semi-auto AR-15s and 30-round magazines.
John Aegard I think i like it!
ReplyDeleteMy primary concern is the millions of guns currently in existence, on which no such tax has been extracted. While in principle we could back tax those, that's probably not a workable solution. If nothing else, we'd see a whole heck of a lot of change in corporate structure to avoid it. "We're a brand new company, killed ... Keckler and Hoch. We have nothing to do with H&K."
William Nichols there must be something in your head that you haven't conveyed yet...the consequence is the gun gets confiscated? By who? When? There is no national registry of guns so noone is even going to know if your uncle's gun is insured or not until it's used in a crime...at which point it's already getting confiscated...and if there is no fine...why does your uncle care, his gun is already gone and he's already collected the insurance for it. And if there is a fine...how is the ownership being traced back to your uncle to pay it? Sometimes, it can be...but not often. But even if it IS insured...who's going to notify the insurance company that they need to pay out...when the gun likely can't be traced back to the owner who has the policy anyway...
ReplyDeleteIf there isn't a proactive component to seeking out uninsured guns, then...you've accomplished nothing. Nobody pays for the "mandatory" insurance. Nobody gets any guns confiscated. Absolutely zip happens.
If there is a proactive component, who does it? Insurance agents aren't going to do it. Are you authorizing a cop to check for proof of insurance when they check for concealed carry permits? Ok...now all's you've done is cause the cost of concealed carry to skyrocket, which non gunowners might not care about...but which accomplishes nothing, because conceal carry folks aren't generally committing gun violence.
Are you requiring gun range people to see proof of insurance before allowing shooters to shoot? Ok, I guess you'll get a few law abiding target shooters to pony up cash for that, but most target shooting doesn't happen in a licensed gun range anyway...and those guys are already prone to look the other way when they can.
So...who checks?
Once you've established that failure to be insured isn't criminal and thus doesn't involve cops...you have...near as I can tell, a toothless law that does nothing except give gun nuts something to bitch about. And if you do give it teeth and allow cops to get warrants to search and seize, you have the misuse I outlined above.
This isn't a "you have to perfectly fix everything before you fix anything" thing. This is a "you have to make sure you're not making it worse when you try to make it better" thing.
I believe you can buy uninsured driver insurance if you aren't yourself a driver, but most states don't have any regulation geared towards making you do it, because you're far more likely to get in a car accident in a car (and either you or the driver would then need to have the uninsured driver insurance for it to pay off).
ReplyDeleteAlso most car insurance covers people who are in your car with your consent (not all insurance covers people driving your car with your consent, you need to check the details of a policy).
ReplyDelete(I'm going to bow out of this conversation because I've got some other stuff to do.)
ReplyDeleteRalph Mazza Then suggest another way.
ReplyDeleteEva Schiffer Yep, that aligns with my experiences. Except one thing: I've not been able to buy non-owner driver insurance. That is, insurance to cover me if I am in someone else's car and their insurance doesn't cover me. A rental is a primary example of this, or an uninsured motorist's car. The rental is covered through visa/MC, but the latter is harder.
ReplyDeleteThanks for joining us, I hope you had fun!
What are we trying to accomplish?
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's my question too. What's the endgame here?
ReplyDeleteOh, i thought that was obvious, as its the point of insurance: to minimize negative externalities.
ReplyDeleteBy negative externalities, you mean compensate families financially for their losses?
ReplyDeleteSo like when doctors mess up, that's what malpractice insurance is for.
The problem I'm seeing is identifying the liable party. When a hospital or doctor screws up, the liable party is obvious...or at least identifiable within the concept of deep pockets.
Who's liable for wrongful gun death? In most cases the shooter is dead, and isn't someone who'd have signed up for "mandatory insurance" anyway.
So gun guy kills 10 people. Where does the money come from to compensate the families of those 10 people. From some pool funded by...insurance companies...using funds collected from legal gun owners? And so owners of AR-15s find their insurance going up every time some random crazy chooses an AR-15 for his spree?
I'm not following the logic of any of that at this point.
When I've seen gun insurance proposals before, the idea was, my gun is insured by me so that in the event my gun is stolen and used in a crime, or somebody's child finds it, or I accidentally shoot someone, I have financial coverage for my negligence...exactly like for car insurance.
This seems to be couched in insurance language, but otherwise doesn't resemble any insurance I'm familiar with. Seems like you're looking to short cut the class action lawsuit against Tobacco and Asbestos companies that resulted in big funds being made available to compensate victims.
That would be a much more likely path to go down. If you can convince people that "gun culture" is responsible for gun deaths, then you can nail gun manufacturers same as Tobacco got nailed.
That took 50 years, even after a general scientific consensus was reached...so "much more likely" here means...maybe in a few decades it wouldn't be dismissed out of hand. But I'm not seeing how you get there with an insurance model.
Car insurance provides me with financial compensation if MY car is damaged or others if MY negligence harms someone else. Homeowners insurance provides me with financial compensation if some life event damages MY property. Medical malpractice insurance provides me with financial compensation if I screw up and need to compensate someone else for MY error.
In all cases I can think of, Insurance that I pay for pays out either 1) to ME to compensate ME for something not my fault, or 2) to someone else to compensate them for something that was my fault.
I know of no insurance that I pay for that compensates someone else for something I had nothing to do with.
Flood insurance is charged to those who choose to live in a flood prone area. Then the insurance pays out to the victims of flooding, spreading the risk among only those who are likely to flood and this pool of money helps those who have not paid in as well. It is a disaster insurance where those most at risk pay into the pool, and everyone benefits and the federal gov't requires people in flood zones with mortgages to have flood insurance. Crop insurance also works in a similar manner, it pays out to people who need it, whether or not you personally had anything to do with the failure of the crops.
ReplyDeleteRight. Those most at risk. If you are at risk of being impacted by a flood you pay. I am not. I don't live on a flood plain. I don't pay.
ReplyDeleteThe equivalent here would be those at risk of being shot pay...which would be everyone, not just gun owners.
At which point you're getting closer to some kind of FEMA for mass shootings funded by tax payers, aka everyone who can afford to pay taxes.
... Those most likely to be shot, Ralph Mazza , are those who live with guns.
ReplyDeleteSure. Which puts you back to a traditional Insurance model. Those who live in houses are most likely to have their house burn down. So they get insurance...to protect themselves. Which is what I described as gun insurance above.
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't help at all with mass shootings of innocents. And aren't the innocent victims of mass shootings the people you're trying to limit negative externalities for?
Ralph Mazza I'm going to ask you this one more time. If you don't like this, fine. Give a different idea, don't simply attempt to knock down sand castles. Do please try again.
ReplyDeleteYou asked in your original post "is this tenable, does it make any sense". So I thought I was providing exactly what you asked for by explaining why it isn't tenable and doesn't make any sense.
ReplyDeleteIs there something else you're looking for now?
I feel like you're talking about several completely different things without realizing that they're completely different things...like accidents in a NASCAR race and accidents caused by drunk drivers. Aside from the fact that they both involve cars...they have nothing at all in common and the solutions for reducing them have nothing to do with each other.
Likewise gun related shootings in the home, gun related shootings while commiting a crime, and gun related shootings involving angry men lashing out are all completely different things...entirely unrelated to each other except that they all involve guns.
And it's not at all clear which of these things you're talking about limiting negative externalities for. It can't be all of them.
So I can't provide any ideas because I still don't know what we're trying to accomplish. What is the specific problem this solution is trying to address?
Ralph Mazza Yesterday, 6:13 PM eastern time, I asked you to give positives rather than negatives. You asked what I was talking about. I explained. You have continued to either intentionally or unintentionally misunderstand, and have become simply a drain on my empathy and social energy. Especially as now you are suggesting that you still don't know what I am talking about.
ReplyDeleteYou started on the offensive, claiming that minimizing externalities of our actions is somehow classist. Which might be the single most ridiculous thing I've ever heard -- classism is, effectively, pushing harm from the top to the bottom, and extracting wealth from the bottom to the top.
If you respond again, I expect it to be with a useful way to minimize negatives from gun violence. If you are incapable or unwilling to do that, then I recommend you listen more and talk less.
Positive suggestion: Nobody, poor or rich, gets to have killing tools unless society has a reason to approve of them killing things.
ReplyDeleteGovernment is actually reasonably good (as such things go) on providing a level playing field. We all drive on the same roads (except in places like Florida). We all use the same tap water.
When you farm that out to for-profit organizations, you end up with a society that is manipulated to the benefit of those who have the economic flexibility to game the system ... not, mind you, the people who are paying for things, but rather the people with enough money and savvy to get what they want while making their poor neighbors pay for it.
Tony Lower-Basch Something similar to the Australian system? My understanding, in brief, is there are a very few number of classifications of guns, ranging from air guns to assault rifles. There are maybe 5 categories? Each of these requires a different level of justification, with the only justification for assault rifles being active duty military.
ReplyDeleteThat has worked well for them. It is a common sense solution. I'm not against it, my primary concern being how we round up the assault rifles. The only ways I know how to do that are sheer government force (do it or else drone strike), or buy backs.
The insurance idea is aimed towards that -- making it expensive, without having to use force. Turning a gun into an economic disaster for the owner.
And by making it expensive, I mean making it cost to the gun owner what a gun in a city actually costs.
ReplyDeleteSo, if I understand you correctly, what you're saying is "Society doesn't appear to have the power to directly establish that kind of rule short of open war ... but an economic rule is more palatable to the people most heavily invested in preventing a direct rule."
ReplyDeleteJust double-checking that I've understood, because if I've got that right it begs the follow-up question: Why is an economic rule more palatable to those people?
Or, in other words: Folks with guns are more likely to give up hoarded money than hoarded guns.
ReplyDeleteI think that's true. We saw it with ObamaCare; there was a lot of talk of "rise up, rise up", which never came to be. That is, in the end, people aren't actually attacking the feds when you ... make them get health insurance, or pay a fine?
As for why people would rather give up their money than their guns? That is, why would anyone possibly choose a gun over wealth? My snide remark is they are evil, but that's too easy. Way too easy. Besides, I don't the majority of my family are evil.
Instead, I think possessing the gun lets them think they can take out the govment if they ever wanted to. Which they don't, and never will. Its a blanket of protection. I think, anyway
Well ... yes and no.
ReplyDeleteIf I want to start an argument from the axiom that a dollar in my hands is a qualitatively different thing (an icon of power) than a dollar in the hands of somebody on the edge of poverty (for whom it is an icon of helplessness), would I need to elaborate on that? Or is it clear, that far?
Sure. There's a few obvious places to go from there, but I'd be a fool if I thought I knew exactly where you are going.
ReplyDeleteSo maybe the "let the market decide" solution is palatable to some people because the market always decides in their favor, letting them get the stuff they want for free, and forbidding the poor from having it.
ReplyDeleteIf I were to offer a piece of legislation that said "Look, we totally need to ban firearms ... for black people. And then take all those firearms we confiscate, and give them to white people," you would be rightly horrified. But offer a market solution that's going to do the same thing, and it seems totally legit.
But, Tony Lower-Basch , can't largely the same argument be made for taking away guns except from those who're deemed as acceptable to have them?
ReplyDeleteThat is, our laws are not enforced evenly. If you pass a law getting rid of guns, then we know it'll be enforced in a racist manner. And maybe the same is true if we make gun owners pay for the harm caused by their guns, but, whoever is doing the insurance has a profoundly strong incentive to make sure they are managing risk correctly.
If we simply ban assault rifles, then what? Local cops get to decide which guns to impound and which ones not to?
William: You keep saying that people doing insurance have a profound incentive to be fair.
ReplyDeleteThey don't.
They have a profound incentive to make money. They have no incentive at all to provide equal services to rich and poor alike. In fact, the incentives are almost all in the other direction: They are rewarded for offering cut-price rates to the rich, and jacking up the cost to the poor. The rich have the economic mobility and resources to shop around (and therefore must be courted). The poor do not (and therefore can be sheared).
I feel like the above is obvious, and I don't want to belabor the obvious, but I'm not quite sure where the conversation goes if we agree on this point.
I think I said "managing risk correctly", which ultimately making profits, sure. It means charging more money to those who can't leave, sure, and less money to those who can -- but, you still need to charge them enough for it to be profitable to do so, or else why even insure them?
ReplyDeleteYeah, but you can charge the poor way more than enough to simply be profitable. And then you can build your brand by running your business on that fleece, and leveraging economy of scale to allow different policies with lower margins (and cheaper prices) to attract the affluent and build word-of-mouth.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, that's the optimal strategy. That's where the market leads you. From each according to their need, to each according to their plenty. The capitalist way.
The thing is, "correctly managing risk" may set the lowest price you can afford to offer, but it means nothing in terms of what upper price you can impose upon a community with few options. Like how the mortgages available to you if you are black are hugely more expensive than the mortgages offered to whites with exactly the same credit history and ability to repay. Both are getting the price the market will bear, but their different markets are forced to bear different prices.
Tony Lower-Basch And then what?
ReplyDeleteGuns are a luxury, right? Not essential to life & liberty. So, a lot of people who are being gouged will turn in their guns and opt out.
If gun violence stays the same, then rates will go up: a lower number of people. And even if they go down a proportional amount, the maintaining of corporate profits means you need to charge more for the next tier.
In virtue of being a luxury, this isn't the same as the credit market; you can simply not own a gun and not be financially responsible for the economic hardships guns cause the country. You cannot opt out of the credit market. Well, you can, but its really hard.
Anyway, then you wind up with fewer guns. Have a standing buyback program, and folks who had put wealth they needed into guns instead get money.
William: So ... guns (and the power to kill easily) for (a) the rich and (b) poor people who have enough privilege in other forms to not bother buying insurance (and not worry about getting laws enforced against them), no guns (and the dubious right to be the helpless target of gun violence) for everyone else?
ReplyDeleteI really prefer the "no guns for anyone" solution. In fact, I think I would even prefer the "free guns for everyone, at all times, everywhere" solution to one that gave guns to the currently privileged, and took them from rising minority groups.
Doesn't that dynamic worry you?
Sure it does. But, what I think is being overlooked, is the entire economic cost of gun violence is pushed to those who own guns.
ReplyDeleteThat is the key differentiation from our current nonsense, and the part that makes it better. This gives an incentive to the rich to reduce gun violence, since its rich gun owners paying for it.
I haven't so much been "overlooking" it as trying to figure out an angle to comment on it without being a dick.
ReplyDeleteThing is, I think you're being a little naive.
You're pegging the cost of a human death at one million dollars. Let's set aside, for the moment, how inhuman and monstrous this math is, and just delve deeper into the rabbit hole. So that's a cost of $50M for the Orlando massacre.
You consider that as $50M of stiff penalties, with no upside to the people paying it. I consider it $50M in advertising budget for a group that is pushing the notion "Gays are not safe, ever, anywhere ... because we have the guns, and they do not. So any time You People think about raising your voice, pushing for change, remember the classic American narrative: 'Stop, or I'll shoot.' "
You're a sweet person William, and I'm quite sure that you would find it hard to imagine that there are bunches and bunches of people out there who would look at a cost of $50M to write that message in blood, nod and say "Money well spent." But you're wrong, and there are. The reason people are quicker to give up their money than their guns is that they believe they are at war, and they're willing to sink national treasure into prosecuting that war, so long as they end up victorious in the end, and their enemies (our fellow Americans) are broken and powerless.
Yeah, maybe.
ReplyDeleteI've got all sorts of math (like what the DoT values a life at, maybe how much worse a hate crime is than a conventional homicide), but if you're point is that people will pay anything to keep folks down. Anything at all?
Then maybe this is for nought; maybe this creates the sort of situation where, if you are fined, you no longer feel bad about it. Still, that'd be something like 110 billion dollars in payouts for gun homicides in 2015 alone, and if hate crimes are indexed at a higher rate, Orlando could be 500 billion dollars. At some point, there's a give where it is not worth contributing to gun violence. There has to be. I just don't know where it is.
I wish I could get angry at calling me sweet and naive. I really do, but I can't.
And now, that cost is distributed throughout society. You and I and Limbaugh and my uncle who brings an AK to Thanksgiving all pay the same for it; that feels like a much less just state of affairs.
I hear what you're saying there, and I agree that your proposal would shift the costs, but the side-effect of enshrining into law the idea that guns are a tool of only the entitled worries me a very great deal.
ReplyDelete