[Discussion] How to enact Gun Safety

The scope of this discussion is strictly options or suggestions on HOW to create policy and law and how to implement them in the US so as to reduce the number of guns in the hands of those who intend to use them for criminal purposes.

Whether or not those options should be explored is not under debate. The 2nd Amendment is not under debate nor under discussion. The assumption of the thread is that "gun control" law is necessary at this point and which policies and laws are good to pursue on the basis of putative results.

Boudreaux wrote:
thrawn82 wrote:

I'm not sure it would balance out for the insurance companies, since guns are relatively low cost items I don't think they could demand premiums like you would for car insurance, BUT the pay out for a claim would be astronomical, just the immediate emergency care for a gunshot would can easily run into the 7 figures, and then you add rehabilitation and chronic problems stemming from the incident... one claim is big money, much bigger than with car insurance.

Yes, but Paleocon is talking about liability insurance. That's legally mandated for drivers, and I don't think your liability coverage has anything to do with the value of your car. Requiring liability insurance means if you go do something dumb with your car, you're covered for a pre-determined amount of financial damages. The cost of that insurance doesn't depend on how nice your car is.

Insuring your car/gun itself is a different thing entirely, not what I'm talking about. I agree with you that the insurance payout for gun violence/damage might be hard to work out, but people can suffer some pretty critical injuries in vehicle accidents. People are killed due to DUI or negligent drivers - how does automobile liability insurance factor in there? The auto liability insurance model might not be a bad place to start.

The first place this falls apart for me is how you enforce compliance. It's easier with vehicles, because you have to have proof of insurance to register your car, which is required every year, and it's pretty easy to get caught if you don't do it unless you don't drive the car. There would have to be some sort of mandatory registration when you buy a gun, an annual renewal with proof of insurance, etc. That gets complicated and costly really quickly.

If the cost doesn't depend on my car, why does my insurance company demand to know what my car is before offering me a quote? A lot of things factor into liability insurance rates. My age, my gender, how long I've been driving, how many traffic violations I've incurred, and what vehicle I own. Or maybe USAA is just f**kin with me, but I doubt it.

edit: I'm also pretty sure my liability insurance has covered values for both property damage and personal damage, ie injuries, so if i hit someone and am deemed at fault and they suffer an injury my liability insurance does pay out to repair them as well as their vehicle

You're not wrong about enforcement on guns though. Liability insurance and registration for hand in hand, I do not think you could create a system of insurance without a gun registry in place as well.

Jonman wrote:

With all this talk of insurance (which I love intellectually, but feels utterly impractical for reasons noted upthread), it leads me to ask, why isn't there more private litigation going on? America being a land of lawyers and all...I would assume that when damage is incurred from negligent gun use, there'd be lawsuits flying left, right and center?

Because after gun control advocates began successfully suing (or threatening to sue gun manufacturers) in the late 90s Congress stepped in and passed a law that largely shielded gun manufacturers and gun dealers from future liability.

That means the only group that can be successfully sued are individual gun owners. But even then you'd probably have a difficult time getting juries to distinguish between an accident and negligent gun use. And, on top of that, the odds are pretty decent that the person who shot you is also someone you know or are related to.

Boudreaux wrote:
thrawn82 wrote:

I'm not sure it would balance out for the insurance companies, since guns are relatively low cost items I don't think they could demand premiums like you would for car insurance, BUT the pay out for a claim would be astronomical, just the immediate emergency care for a gunshot would can easily run into the 7 figures, and then you add rehabilitation and chronic problems stemming from the incident... one claim is big money, much bigger than with car insurance.

Yes, but Paleocon is talking about liability insurance. That's legally mandated for drivers, and I don't think your liability coverage has anything to do with the value of your car. Requiring liability insurance means if you go do something dumb with your car, you're covered for a pre-determined amount of financial damages. The cost of that insurance doesn't depend on how nice your car is.

Insuring your car/gun itself is a different thing entirely, not what I'm talking about. I agree with you that the insurance payout for gun violence/damage might be hard to work out, but people can suffer some pretty critical injuries in vehicle accidents. People are killed due to DUI or negligent drivers - how does automobile liability insurance factor in there? The auto liability insurance model might not be a bad place to start.

The first place this falls apart for me is how you enforce compliance. It's easier with vehicles, because you have to have proof of insurance to register your car, which is required every year, and it's pretty easy to get caught if you don't do it unless you don't drive the car. There would have to be some sort of mandatory registration when you buy a gun, an annual renewal with proof of insurance, etc. That gets complicated and costly really quickly.

Precisely. I think in the last two states I have held a DL in, the mandatory level of liability insurance was $100k.

I have never had a vehicle worth $100k.

thrawn82 wrote:

If the cost doesn't depend on my car, why does my insurance company demand to know what my car is before offering me a quote? A lot of things factor into liability insurance rates. My age, my gender, how long I've been driving, how many traffic violations I've incurred, and what vehicle I own. Or maybe USAA is just f**kin with me, but I doubt it.

The liability portion may care slightly about your car (certain sorts of cars, like sports cars, maybe risk factors for more frequent collisions or more injuries/damages resulting from collisions), but if you were to look at the cost for different parts of the car insurance separately the cost of your liability portion would be effected less by a different car than the part that is actually insuring the value of the vehicle.

Speaking of using car insurance as a model, we don't have to commit such a scenario to fully paying 100% of the damages. (This is America, what is some medical bankruptcy between friends). We can draw a line like the State's do with vehicle liability service and say that each weapon comes with a $X thousand liability policy.

It could be different for different weapons, a shotgun, revolver, or lever-action rifle could be a $15k policy, a semi-automatic handgun could be $30k, a semi-automatic rifle could be $75k.

We can legislate the required coverage, Then let the actuaries empirically figure out how much to charge for those policies for different weapons.

thrawn82 wrote:

If the cost doesn't depend on my car, why does my insurance company demand to know what my car is before offering me a quote? A lot of things factor into liability insurance rates. My age, my gender, how long I've been driving, how many traffic violations I've incurred, and what vehicle I own. Or maybe USAA is just f**kin with me, but I doubt it.

Having just sat down with my insurance company a couple of months ago, I suspect it's because the software they use to generate insurance quotes requires the vehicle make, model, and year before it will do anything. But the liability portion of your insurance - I suspect - is driven way more by your age, driving record, etc. than how nice your car is. Yonder makes a good point about certain cars being higher-risk, I hadn't thought of that.

Insurance companies have figured out how to insure almost anything, I think they could come up with a similar system for gun liability. States could legislate a minimum required insurance coverage just like they do with auto insurance (although opponents might point to New Hampshire, the only state that doesn't require motorists to be insured).

Opponents might say the cost of liability insurance infringes on their constitutional right to own guns, others might say that the constitution doesn't guarantee the right to affordable arms.

I don't know - gun law discussions never go anywhere because it's always framed as "all the guns" vs. "no guns", even though that's incorrect. However, when you introduce the might of American Capitalism and look for even more ways to make money off of gun ownership...??

Yup. And I have said upthread, the current model of gun ownership basically amounts to society at large subsidizing the costs of irresponsible gun ownership and use by treating every dumbass with a gun like an uninsured motorist.

You're a deadbeat dad who couch surfs at your girlfriend's trailer? No problem, you can have an AR15 and a million rounds for which to demonstrate your manliness. Because gods know that is what we do in America. And if you manage to accidentally shot you girlfriend's toddler because you can' be bothered to properly secure said firearm, it's society that pays for it because responsibility is tyranny.

Dimmerswitch wrote:
Maq wrote:

I think the counter argument to that is that the 2nd is intended to protect the populace from tyranny so the guns that people have should be able to stand up to a military junta should one arise.

We've had that argument made on these very forums, in fact.

This was entirely my point.

If you think I agree with that argument you've really not been paying attention. Point is that argument matters to the people who deploy it and you can't ignore that fact.

Actually the best approach I've heard lately was on my feed yesterday: Take all the guns then offer Thoughts and Prayers™ for the people who've tragically lost their guns.

I should have been more clear.

I understood that you were being sarcastic, and raising that as an absurd position - I was only intending to point out that that exact argument had been made in earnest, on this forum, not long ago.

Wasn't sarcastic or absurd actually. Just pointing out that's a very real justification for some people and you're not going to get anywhere by ignoring it, and you're not going to defeat it by throwing facts at it.

OG_slinger wrote:
Jonman wrote:

With all this talk of insurance (which I love intellectually, but feels utterly impractical for reasons noted upthread), it leads me to ask, why isn't there more private litigation going on? America being a land of lawyers and all...I would assume that when damage is incurred from negligent gun use, there'd be lawsuits flying left, right and center?

Because after gun control advocates began successfully suing (or threatening to sue gun manufacturers) in the late 90s Congress stepped in and passed a law that largely shielded gun manufacturers and gun dealers from future liability.

That means the only group that can be successfully sued are individual gun owners. But even then you'd probably have a difficult time getting juries to distinguish between an accident and negligent gun use. And, on top of that, the odds are pretty decent that the person who shot you is also someone you know or are related to.

A couple of lawsuit rules that come to mind:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Res_ip...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrah...

So I have been thinking about the second amendment and the one conclusion I come up with is that the NRA needs to be regulated or disbanded. They have taken up the mantle of militia themselves. They have membership and no other organization promotes the right to bear and keep arms more than them. So the "well regulated" starts with them and trickles down.

The other thing I have been thinking is that the interpretation seems to alway be the cart before the horse:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

In other words the free State needs to be in jeopardy before the regulated militia forms before the limits of who gets to keep+bear arms are lifted.

And I see a lot of wiggle room where it breaks down.
-So okay, no background checks, anyone can own guns but each person is allotted 2 (gun[s]) and you get no ammo (or are limited to one normal clip)
-There is no language in the amendment about the infringing of firing said arms nor the consequences for doing so.
-And it doesn't say anything about infringing on the ability to form a militia or the ability to disband them.

fangblackbone wrote:

The other thing I have been thinking is that the interpretation seems to alway be the cart before the horse:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

In other words the free State needs to be in jeopardy before the regulated militia forms before the limits of who gets to keep+bear arms are lifted.

Two things to keep in mind:

One, the Bill of Rights didn't even apply to the states when it was written. The Bill of Rights was to protect people and their state governments from the *federal* government. LINK

Two, the federal government at the time didn't have nearly the regulatory power it does now. LINK

So most 'interpretations' you see are bullcrap (on both sides) because they start by misunderstanding the history.

fangblackbone wrote:

So I have been thinking about the second amendment and the one conclusion I come up with is that the NRA needs to be regulated or disbanded. They have taken up the mantle of militia themselves. They have membership and no other organization promotes the right to bear and keep arms more than them. So the "well regulated" starts with them and trickles down.

This is incorrect. Militias are not ad-hoc organizations that can self declare themselves or be declared by us. That's not to say that random groups of men with weapons don't CALL themselves militias, but they are not, they are just gun clubs with delusions of grandeur.

The literal US militias, as in explicitly declared and defined by law, are the various National Guards. Those are our "well-regulated" military organizations that primarily answer to their state governments, and operate non-infringed amounts of firepower, up to and including tanks and military jets.

Pro-gun enthusiasts ignore this actual implementation of the second amendment because they actually just want to have a lot of guns. That is why I try to be good about not calling them "pro 2A" people, because they are specifically ignoring this country's implementation of that amendment.

Yonder wrote:
fangblackbone wrote:

So I have been thinking about the second amendment and the one conclusion I come up with is that the NRA needs to be regulated or disbanded. They have taken up the mantle of militia themselves. They have membership and no other organization promotes the right to bear and keep arms more than them. So the "well regulated" starts with them and trickles down.

This is incorrect. Militias are not ad-hoc organizations that can self declare themselves or be declared by us. That's not to say that random groups of men with weapons don't CALL themselves militias, but they are not, they are just gun clubs with delusions of grandeur.

The literal US militias, as in explicitly declared and defined by law, are the various National Guards. Those are our "well-regulated" military organizations that primarily answer to their state governments, and operate non-infringed amounts of firepower, up to and including tanks and military jets.

Pro-gun enthusiasts ignore this actual implementation of the second amendment because they actually just want to have a lot of guns. That is why I try to be good about not calling them "pro 2A" people, because they are specifically ignoring this country's implementation of that amendment.

While this is great, hasn't the Supreme Court been pretty clear about disagreeing with your reading?

No, the Supreme Court has stated that the "well-regulated militia" part of the 2A does not apply/limit the "shall not be infringed" part. While I do disagree with that as well, that's not what I was referring to when I said that pro-gun people were ignoring the amendment (if it wasn't for SCOTUS agreeing with them I would make that classification). I meant that any person classifying some non-official group (real or hypothetical) as a "militia" or ignoring the National Guards function as our militia, was disregarding our implementation of the second amendment.

To phrase that another way, the Supreme Court said "we can't infringe on people's right to bear arms even if they aren't in our well-regulated militias", which is crucially distinct from "we can't infringe on my right to bear arms in case me and the boys decide to start our own militia!"

Yeah, to try to tl;dr what I think the supreme court specifically said, it's that there's a constitutional right to self-defense that applies to the federal government *and* the states, and so there are limits to how much either level of government can infringe on that right by restricting gun ownership for self-defense.

I forget if they called it an actual right to arms or not, but that's the reasoning. I'm pretty sure it actually moved away from at least part of the 'militia' argument in choosing the 'self-defense' argument, as the weapons most useful for self-defense diverge from the ones useful for fighting a military action.

fangblackbone wrote:

The other thing I have been thinking is that the interpretation seems to alway be the cart before the horse:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

In other words the free State needs to be in jeopardy before the regulated militia forms before the limits of who gets to keep+bear arms are lifted.

You've got this almost exactly backwards, at least historically. Before the Constitution was written, the militia was understood to be every military-age white male. Those men were also expected to provide their own weapons, a tradition which dated back centuries in the United Kingdom, and their right of using those arms for self-defense and community defense was long established.

At the time, the Anti-Federalists were very wary of a standing army, having just defeated one that was wasn't particularly well-behaved. The 2nd Amendment was specifically proposed by Madison to ensure that the Federal government did not have the power to disarm state citizens or control the arming of the militia, and thus the ability to deprive a state of military power. Reading the various drafts of the amendment is very informative.

State constitutions were often more explicit. The Pennsylvania constitution, for example, says this:

The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned.

It's also critical to note that "well-regulated" had a very different meaning at the time - it meant well-trained, not regulated legally (and there was much argument about how well trained they should or could be, which made sense as the performance of various militias at various times ranged from terrible to excellent). From the arguments and writings of the time, it's very clear that the writers of the national and state Constitutions not only meant to preserve people's right to bear arms, but in fact insisted that the arms they bore were weapons suitable for military service.

Thus, if we were actually following the intentions of the framers and the laws enacted just after the new government was formed, not only would every adult be expected to arm themselves with military weapons and supply their own ammunition, but they would also be expected to train with them and be subject to call-ups at any time for national defense.

So why not hold a national exercise, call every person bearing arms to turn up at designated locations nationally. Those that answer the call to arms are militia, everyone else isn't so clean up the gun ownership from there out.

Bfgp wrote:

So why not hold a national exercise, call every person bearing arms to turn up at designated locations nationally. Those that answer the call to arms are militia, everyone else isn't so clean up the gun ownership from there out.

Handguns Across America?

Singapore has forced military time so their adult males are kept in readiness for battle. Not military, but would classify under militia. Can handle guns competently. Reasonably fit. You could say that since militia use is what justifies gun ownership, then gun ownership implies you want to be part of a regulated militia, and so you have to register and receive regular training and certification in the use of your weapon.

Bfgp wrote:

So why not hold a national exercise, call every person bearing arms to turn up at designated locations nationally. Those that answer the call to arms are militia, and will then round up and disarm everyone else.

/TinfoilHat

And of course, there's the problem that the people who are capable of showing up aren't the people who can best be trusted with firearms, or even the people who can be relied upon to show up were guerrilla warfare somehow(?!?) be needed on the ground in the U.S. It would simply be those who have the desire to show up so they can keep owning firearms, and the privilege of not having other things that prevent them from showing up that are more important to their day-to-day survival.

Aetius wrote:

It's also critical to note that "well-regulated" had a very different meaning at the time - it meant well-trained, not regulated legally (and there was much argument about how well trained they should or could be, which made sense as the performance of various militias at various times ranged from terrible to excellent). From the arguments and writings of the time, it's very clear that the writers of the national and state Constitutions not only meant to preserve people's right to bear arms, but in fact insisted that the arms they bore were weapons suitable for military service.

Thus, if we were actually following the intentions of the framers and the laws enacted just after the new government was formed, not only would every adult be expected to arm themselves with military weapons and supply their own ammunition, but they would also be expected to train with them and be subject to call-ups at any time for national defense.

If you read the first Militia Act the militia is also well-regulated legally, when I read it I was struck by how the legislation practically micro-managed the definition and activity of the militias.

You would actually have to make a convincing argument for the value (and our ability) to strictly follow the original implementation of the militia, rather than ensuring that we are consistently applying those values to our new situations. I personally feel that it is infeasible for people to show up at the National Guard with their own supply helicopters, personnel carriers, and jet planes.

Yonder wrote:

You would actually have to make a convincing argument for the value (and our ability) to strictly follow the original implementation of the militia, rather than ensuring that we are consistently applying those values to our new situations. I personally feel that it is infeasible for people to show up at the National Guard with their own supply helicopters, personnel carriers, and jet planes.

You won't get such an argument from me. As a libertarian, I'm pretty comfortable with the current Second Amendment interpretation by the Supreme Court, and deeply opposed to any mandatory-service militia system. As I mentioned upthread, I think that by far the best and easiest thing we could do to lower deaths-by-gun in the United States would be to end Prohibition.

I don't think the mass shootings, spousal murder, and firearm suicides in the US are related to illegal drug violence...

Did I already post in this thread the Opening Arguments podcast about the second amendment? Pretty much anyone interested in the history of and laws surrounding it should give it a listen. Episodes 21 and 26.

Aetius wrote:

I think that by far the best and easiest thing we could do to lower deaths-by-gun in the United States would be to end Prohibition.

Prohibition of what exactly?

Everything

WizKid wrote:

Everything

Well if you stop prohibiting murder, by definition your murder rate goes way down...