Somewhat repetitive but some of those bans are of things virtually everyone believes are inherently morally wrong, not just wrong because illegal. That’s a very major contrast to guns, or alcohol, drugs or illegal immigration. In those cases govt action constantly swims (or swam) upstream against moral indifference at best among a large segment of the population.
Focusing on those more like cases, the ban on alcohol was in total a colossal failure with many bad side effects which persisted after it was recognized as a failure. The ban on illegal drugs is very iffy. When not arguing in favor of gun bans, a lot of people on this board agree. The difficulty in controlling illegal immigration is hardly ever mentioned here…because the consensus on a board like this is that nobody is doing anything wrong. Note: the issue isn’t the body count, it’s the widespread perception the thing being banned isn’t wrong. In case of guns there would be in fact a strong feeling of moral necessity to break such a law, stronger than what you see in case of facilitating illegal immigrants now.
Again some kind of performance art or signalling, it has to be. I can’t wrap my head around any intelligent person who knows the US thinking a gun ban would be possible here (including the 2nd amendment, not as some holy writ, but the consensus needed to change amendments is part of the highly favorable defensive social/political terrain to prevent any such change).
Nope. They use actuaries to figure out the risk and then have cap to limit the liability. Gun insurance would similarly figure out the risk and limit the liability with caps. The premium cost is what would become prohibitive for some poorer people but wealthier folks would be able to have their guns even if they were really shitty risks.
$1000/gun? So a $200 shotgun would now cost $1200?
Would I pay this tax only on new guns or can I buy a used gun from my neighbor without paying the tax? If so then you have just given every gun owner something on the order of $1000 per gun they own. And only a very tiny minority of guns used in murder are purchased by the murderer at the gun store.
My problem with gun insurance schemes has always been that you want the run of the gun owner to subsidize the cost of gun violence by criminals. Actuarially, the cost of gun insurance for accidents is incredibly low. I suppose you can interpolate the chances of someone murdering someone and charge them based on their chances of becoming a murderer but this will start to look pretty racist pretty quick. But the big problem is that gun control folks want regular folks to buy insurance that covers the cost of criminal gun violence by others.
What you’re talking about is a prior restraint. We already have laws against murder. You want to have laws against an inanimate object that someone can use to murder someone else. So the “only criminals can have guns” argument is entirely valid.
Why is that an issue? Many states require all drivers to have uninsured motorist coverage that covers accidents caused by drivers without insurance…even though insurance is obviously required of all drivers.
Lots of accidents are caused by people speeding / drinking etc - in other words, people breaking the law. Doesn’t negate the need for insurance, does it? Especially since the point is the insurance is often needed for people that -weren’t- breaking the law.
Yes. Just like we have laws regulating ownership etc. of dangerous chemicals and such. What’s your point?
Cite? I was under the impression that the only insurance required by most states was liability insurance, for the people you might hit and injure, not to protect oneself from uninsured motorists that might hit you.
The bigger issue is that insurance doesn’t typically cover illegal or intentional acts. Also, if you game out how the payments would work the comparisons to insurance make less sense.
When I disputed the hyperbolic claim that no bans work, I wasn’t signaling - I really don’t think that bans are utterly ineffective. And I also don’t it’s reasonable to defend a comparison of banning guns to banning alcohol by claiming that guns are super-easy to make and the second they’re generally unavailable everybody and their inbred cousin will be whipping them up in their gun stills in their basement. That’s absurd. Some people would maybe manufacture a handful of guns, and not do much with them lest they get arrested. It would hardly be something done in every third college dormroom.
Of course, this is presuming that a full on ban was instituted in the first place.
A full-on ban of guns in the USA is vanishingly unlikely, to say the least. And while I certainly wouldn’t object to a full-on ban, it’s not really what I as a liberal am shooting for.
My first goal would be to figure out how criminals are getting their hands on them, and crack down on those channels. From what little I hear, this means cracking down on person-to-person sales, which tend to be poorly tracked. Methods of more closely (and permanently) associating a weapon with its original purchaser seem worth looking into too - if you know the police will come for you when your gun is used in a shooting, you might not sell it to some jerk.
My second goal would be to crack down on methods of modding guns to fire rapidly. Based on the people who insist that every semiautomatic weapon is actually a machine gun if you’ve also got a belt loop and a paper clip, I’d say we could ban all semi-automatic weapons. This will bother certain hobbyists, and certain terrorists, but I don’t see it being a serious problem for the ‘I want a pistol in my purse’ crowd.
My third goal would be, sigh, just accepting that people are going to keep on murdering themselves and their families with their precious handguns. And keeping the things out of my house.
Not sure here. Are you saying that if I hit someone with my car intentionally, then they would not be covered?
Speaking of which, who does pay for medical treatment of gun victims? If a survivor of the LV shooting doesn’t have medical insurance, or even if they do, but can’t afford the deductible, who pays for that?
Laws can vary by state, however typically for vehicular insurance that covers actions of the insured, there would exist exclusions of coverage for intentional acts. You would still be on the hook for damages, however the insurance company can appropriately deny a claim since they are not providing insurance coverage for those things.
They could seek civil damages against the perpetrator. He’s dead, though his estate will probably be liquidated I’d imagine. Barring that, they are on their own the same as if they experienced any other injury.
But if a car maker or airbag maker can be sued if they have knowledge that their products are potentially dangerous. Tobacco makers have paid millions to settle claims.
If someone has an accident driving your car, you can be held liable.
The only purpose of "gun insurance’ is to make guns unaffordable.
Getting insurance for gun accidents is dirt cheap, and you may already be covered.
300,000,000 guns
10000 murders.
It is doubtful that insurance would cover deliberate acts. Even if it did, that idea that 3000 harmless and legal guns owners should have to pay for the actions of one gut is ridiculous, especially as that one guy, being a criminal- doesnt have insurance anyway.
This might shock you, but I’m not really a gun guy. So I have to ask:
Can the pistols one finds in purses be modified into fully automatic weapons with a belt loop and a paper clip, or a bump stock, or similar such things?
Do the pistols one finds in purses have to be semi-auto (or double-action revolvers which function similarly) to accomplish their purposes?
The difficulty in controlling illegal immigration is hardly ever mentioned here…because the consensus on a board like this is that nobody is doing anything wrong. Note: the issue isn’t the body count, it’s the widespread perception the thing being banned isn’t wrong. In case of guns there would be in fact a strong feeling of moral necessity to break such a law, stronger than what you see in case of facilitating illegal immigrants now.