You don’t have to have insurance on your car if you don’t plan to drive it on the motorways, but then yu also can’t register it. It is highly recommended that even if you have a parked car, that you have insurance on it (which is very cheap for a parked car) in case it rolls out into the street or someone steals it.
In a way, we do have insurance on smokers, the tobacco tax. If it would make you feel better, instead of insurance on guns, we can call it a tax.
If knives start being a major problem, then maybe we should be looking at the types of knives that people are using to kill each other, and see if there is something to be done on that. As they account for about 10% of the homicides that guns do, we should probably focus on them first. Focusing on the cause something that causes much fewer deaths is a distraction, at best.
And your insurance rates are affected if you have a pool.
A tax of 10 percent of the sales price is imposed on pistols and revolvers, and a tax of 11 percent of the sales price is imposed on other portable weapons (e.g., rifles and shotguns) and ammunition.
Doesn’t seem that high to me for firearm owners that are effectively free riders. Christ, I pay 9.5% property tax, and with the new tax bill, I will be paying a shitload more to Uncle Sugar given the $10k rule. FYI, that is significantly greater than 10% on a $800 firearm.
What tax would be sufficient, in your mind?
That’s on top of sales tax, in most states. And many states will more strongly enforce use taxes, so ordering online in my state the FFL has to collect tax. No escaping it like you used to do with Amazon and can still do with smaller retailers.
It’s pretty much one of the “nicest” taxes out there. Revenue goes to state wildlife management programs. If they don’t spend it, it goes to migratory birds. A lot more transparent than other taxes.
T&C, sorry, but I have to drop from this. I just don’t have the time to debate it in anything other than a half-assed way, which does none of us any good.
Liability insurance specifically for having a gun is not IMO a serious policy proposal. It’s fine that a majority (on a left leaning forum like this) votes yes, but most of those people, if they are thinking straight and let’s assume they are, are really voting for ‘let’s think up and do do things which discourage people from having guns’, or thinking perhaps straight but more bloody mindedly ‘let’s have financial penalties on the situations and lifestyles of people we don’t like, the GOP did that with the state and local tax deduction, amiright?’
That is, thinking people realize that misuse of guns is an extremely skewed phenomenon. It’s a non-negligible problem, but it’s very concentrated in a relatively few people, people likely to stick the insurance co with claims very soon after getting their guns, if they follow the law and get the insurance at all which isn’t likely for those people. Car liability insurance has that problem to some degree. A lot of car accidents involve uninsured drivers (especially in areas with a lot of foreign born and/or illegal residents like where I live). And many people born everywhere are much worse drivers than other people.
But it pales in comparison to how skewed gun crime is among gun owners. Nor is there any plausible process of judging risk by policy holder based on any criteria that would be politically acceptable. Virtually nobody who actually applied would have a previous record of using a gun in a crime, selling/giving their gun illegally to someone else, etc. If they had done those things but not gotten caught, they wouldn’t admit it. This is a pretty far cry from the relatively speaking more transparent risk landscape insurance companies see in judging car insurance clients by relatively more common traffic accidents and citations.
It’s just not a good type of policy, one where you really aim to do one thing (make people give up guns) but pretend you’re doing something else. And that’s even before you consider that the people willing to play along and buy the insurance wouldn’t be where much of the risk was anyway. It’s IOW a simply worse policy than just building the political support to restrict purchase and ownership of guns, straight up. Nor would it be any politically easier.
No you are not right. If you got that from telepathy, then I have to tell you that your telepathic powers are on the fritz.
I am for some sort of insurance program for guns in order to offset the damage they do. People get shot with them, and someone has to pay to fix or at least bury the people that got shot.
If I get shot, through no fault of my own, then I am going to be on the hook for medical bills. My insurance will cover parts, but I will need to cover deductibles and anything else the insurance decides not to cover.
I fI am in a car accident, whether it is my fault or not, my insurance covers my treatment (up to the limits of my policy), but if I am in a gun incident, then I get nothing.
So, without insurance for guns, the victim gets massive medical bills that could bankrupt them. If they cannot pay, then those costs are passed on to those of us who can pay for treatment.
And that’s not even going into the issues of a family provider being killed, and leaving behind a family to fend for themselves.
Who do you think should be responsible for making the victims of gun violence whole, if not the gun owners?
I can’t tell what you are claiming. First you say that insurance will cover part of your medical expenses, then you say you get nothing. Which is it?
Do you not have deductibles if you are in a car accident? Does your insurance not cover you if you get shot?
How about those who perpetrated the violence?
Like was said earlier, you don’t want the victims to pay anything because they are not at fault. Why should the gun owners pay - in what way were they at fault? Just having their gun stolen doesn’t constitute fault in most other circumstances.
I cant find a good stat on what % of murders are commited by those who already have a felony record, but other stats on Recidivism seem to indicate the number is about 80%. I have seen stats that show only 15% are family related.
So, of “gun crimes” 80% are commited by those who wouldnt have insurance (or a registered weapon, or even likely a weapon bought legally)
"On the other hand, if Scarborough had said that 3 percent of criminals who use guns get them legally, he would have come closer to the truth. There are still big issues with that, but he would have found some support in Cook’s work.
…
That said, of the 70 inmates who had possessed a firearm, only 2, or 2.9 percent, had bought it at a gun store. The report found that percentage was in line with the findings of the Chicago Police Department when it traced weapons seized from suspected gang members."
That shows that only 3% (estimates vary) of guns used in crimes are bought legally.
So your chance of getting a insurance payout is vanishingly small.
I do want to point out that only about 2/3rd of murders are commited by guns.
Note that if you are hurt by a non-family memberin a crime, there already is a fund
where the actual perpetrators of crimes pay in, and you can get funds out.
So, if you were shot, you would have only a tiny chance of getting a insuraqnce pay out, why fine (becuse yes, it is a fine) the legal law abiding gun owners, why not collect from the perpetrators?
The “other thing” this concept is primarily inspired by is auto insurance.
I may not legally operate my vehicle in my state (most states? all states? all US? much of the world?) without insurance. No matter how skillful or good intentioned or responsible I may be. This is because there is some possibility that my vehicle may end up causing harm to others.
Another way to get at this externality would be by imposing a tax or fee on gun ownership, which would fund a Victims Compensation Fund. Actuaries could base the fee on specific gun types and the lilelihood of that gun type injuring others. Then you would only have to look at the gun and not the gun owner.
What % of auto accidents are caused by the registered owner of the vehicle? A pretty high %, yes? I found a number of around of accidents 18% were with stolen vehicles. So let us say 80%?
As I pointed out above only about** 3% **of gun crimes are caused by a weapon legally purchased.
See the difference? And I have been in a number of accidents in my driving life, and a few were even my fault. I imagine the same is with most people. On average, you get into a accident about once every 15 years. How often are you the victim of a violent crime? I was held up once, no actual violence occured. Shot at once “in the line of duty”. You have about a 2% chance in a lifetime of being a violent crime victim, and less that 10% of violent crimes are with a gun. So, if you live to be 60, you will be in three accidents and 80% of those will be with the registered owner, not a stolen car. You have a .2% chance of being the victim of a violent gun crime, and 2% will be with the registered owner.
As I also pointed out above there is already a excise tax on guns, and there is already a victims fund paid by the actual perpetrators.
I suppose that maybe I was not quite clear enough, as we are talking about two types of insurance here, health and hypothetical gun. In the context that I used them in, it seems very clear which I was referring to, but to help you out…
My health insurance will cover part of the costs, but I get nothing to cover the deductibles and anything else that my health insurance doesn’t cover, including things like loss of income from disability from the injury.
If I am in a car accident, and it is someone else’s fault, then I am not responsible for deductibles. If it’s my fault, then I may be, depending on my policy.
The problem with relying on those that perpetuated the violence is the same problem with relying on the person at fault in a car accident to make you whole.
Like was said earlier, it wouldn’t be the gun owner, but the insurance policy on the gun that is paying, the same as if someone stole your car.
And that is why the policy is on the gun, not the owner. If the gun is stolen, then it still is under the policy. And to be fair, and this is something that is possibly too complex for this thread, as the OP has a different insurance scheme than myself, it should be an umbrella policy, in that all guns are covered by the policy. It shouldn’t matter that the particular gun that shot you is covered or not.
As long as you point out only that 1/3 of murders aren’t committed by guns. And you also note how many injuries are committed by guns that require the victim of violence to cover the medical bills.
I’ve heard of such, but also heard that it is very hard to get a payout, and that it is a pittance. I don’t have any experience, and their page isn’t very informative about how to go about being made whole. If it is actually effective, then sure, we can use that, and have the gun insurance pay into that if it needs the funds to cover the victims of gun violence.
Why do you consider gun insurance a fine? Do you also consider car insurance to be a fine?
You are not liable if your car is stolen. Making a gun owner liable for a gun that has been taken away in a crime is ludicrous.
Well if 2/3rs of murdersare commited by guns, ipso facto 1/3rd are commited by something other than guns.
Becuase only about 1 gun in 30000 is used in a murder and of that number 98% are not registered.
As opposed to abut one car in three gets into a accident and at least 2 of those three are by the registered owner. You are insuring 4 cars for one pay out.
You are insuring 299,999,800 guns for one pay out.
I said people who are thinking straight about this, even if in favor, recognize it as a way to discourage gun ownership and/or punish gun owners (or ‘red staters’, etc.). I didn’t say you were thinking straight about it.
The people who should be on the hook for making victims of gun violence whole is, obviously, the people who commit the gun violence crimes (or act illegally or grossly negligently in selling or giving a gun). It shouldn’t be people who neither committed the crimes nor facilitated them with their own illegal or grossly negligent actions.
Insurance would therefore be a rational solution only if the people creating claims by their illegal/negligent actions related to guns were mainly from the same pool of people it would be plausible to suppose would follow the mandate to buy the insurance. But that’s not plausible at all. The great bulk of gun crimes are committed with illegal weapons.
Also, insurance works rationally when insurance companies can judge the risk of individual people they insure. Public policy prohibits this only when there are (judged to be) an overwhelming public interest not to charge riskier people more or too much more (as in health insurance*). ‘Insurance’ is not in general supposed to just create a pool of people to pay some uniform rate to cover a cost which some separate pool of people mainly cause, which would manifestly be the case with this proposal.
So again it’s rational to vote yes if the actual justification is discouraging gun ownership or lashing out at gun owners. As an actual insurance system it’s a ridiculous proposal. And that’s very transparent to most people even if it truly is not to you. So the proposal wouldn’t even get points for honesty, which at least straight forward proposals to tighten gun control laws can (and do from me, though I don’t necessarily agree with them, depending which).
*not to sidetrack on whether that actually works well.
If the firearm owner fails to secure the weapon properly (not all legally registered firearm owners are completely “responsible firearm owners” or are negligent or fail to secure the firearm). There is responsibility to secure the firearm properly. IMHO the US government shouldn’t mandate what “secure” means, and by the same token firearm owners are allowed to use their best judgement even if that falls short. It’s pretty simple, firearm owners are responsible for the firearm until it has been legally transferred or officially reported as stolen. Is this not part of “responsible firearm ownership”?
Society as a whole bears the cost of firearm crimes, shootings and deaths.
Curious why a responsible firearm owner doesn’t want to assume at least some of the costs associated? You just want to push that responsibility onto society?
Again, this is an analogy, but “attractive nuisance” insurance is somewhat akin. I can fence my backyard, lock it up, post signs, follow municipal code, etc and yet be held personally liable if a kid sneaks in and drowns in my pool. I carry liability insurance to cover that possibility to cover the costs and not bankrupt myself.
As a non-firearm owner, I view you as a free rider in the system. Can you explain why firearm owners are not free riders, and why they should have an exception? Thanks
Look, most crimes are commited for money, so let us fine the people who get money taken from them. After all, if it wasnt for their money, there’d not be so much crime, right?:rolleyes:
Society as a whole shoulders the cost of most crime.
There are extra taxes on guns, and fees.
No more than people who get robbed for their cash are "free riders. ":rolleyes:
