I am assuming that education, along with economic incentives and disincentives, helps to promote safer behaviour. There are no techniques that result in 100% optimal results.
I think it’s worth it to prevent needless deaths and injuries, not just from mass shootings but from the other scenarios you mentioned. If the numbers are low then every individual death or injury avoided has a greater impact. That wouldn’t be the only positive result, but it’s an important one.
Any cop who deals with burglaries will tell you that a typical thief would be lucky to have 30 minutes in the house. We’re not talking about an Ocean’s Eleven heist, we’re talking about typical opportunist burglars who look for easy pickings (poor security, no-one home), a quick getaway and a haul that they can fence at the best price.
Also, theft-proofing should be high-cost for weapons. Although if people got a break on mandatory firearms insurance premiums, the prices of safes and locks would likely come down as a matter of course.
The NRA, yes. In re: Colin Noir, the president* has his African-American supporters, too – that doesn’t change the fact that he’s pandering to white supremacists and alt-right bigots.
Also, where is my pre-emptive strike against equality arguments?
They do make implications that it’s the liberals and progressives who are the real racists in the gun control debate ring hollow, though.
Ahh… the refreshing “we know what is good for you, better than you do.” Maybe you should take what meager earnings and subsidies the poor get and purchase their necessities for them. God only knows that if you just let them have money they will spend it on beer and cigarettes and iPhones instead of healthcare.
Yeah, I am not one to overuse “-ists”. This isn’t pulling out the “poor” and “race” card because you suggested limiting personal freedoms. It is pointing out, explicitly, how and why the proposed scheme would be use mostly to disenfranchise the poor and minorities. Many laws on their surface appear to be made for “everyone”, but their application and enforcement are often slanted. Which is why both the poor and minorities are more likely to get jail time for drug possession than some middle class white guy. It is why crack possession has more severe penalties than cocaine. It is why the “common sense” gun laws like having the Sheriff sign on off on a pistol permit was actually a tool to keep hands out of the hands of minorities.
Now if you had suggested something else like a waiting period or magazine restriction or some other law, I certainly wouldn’t be using the same argument.
Now here is the really messed up and thing - yes poor areas are disproportionately affected by violent crime. But your shoulder shruggy, “Eh ‘since the poorest in society are most negatively affected by firearms, it is seems that their inability to readily purchase weapons would actually be better for poor people as a group’”, shows that you think all of them are basically the same. The poor are prone to violent, criminal action. I suppose it didn’t cross your mind that a majority are law abiding people wanting some protection that would end up either not being able to afford it, or running afoul of the law by not purchasing insurance. Never mind the fact that it is a right. I guess by your logic all those stop and frisks and police searches in poor area are really just doing everyone a favor, right? I mean, given how negatively affected they are by crime and violence, they should welcome a little harassment if it means keeping weapons and drugs off the street.
Seriously though - your comments have left a worst taste in my mouth than that shit government cheese I grew up with.
Yes, many countries have less guns and even less accidents. I bet they have less a lot of things. Again, 800 accidental deaths and 15000 injuries per year isn’t a high enough risk factor to warrant extra insurance. You want to know how I know this? Because if it was, then insurance companies WOULDN’T COVER GUN ACCIDENTS! That’s right, the people in the business of risk assessment, build all sorts of exclusion clauses into polices.
If owning a gun in an of itself was so inherently risky, then they would insist on an extra policy for coverage of accidents. They already do for thefts. Generally a home owners or renters policy covers the cost of a gun or two, but if you have a lot you will want to get a separate policy against theft.
There are many activities that your standard health policy might not cover, like sky diving, parasailing, or even motorcycling. The reason being the risk factors are much greater. Other exclusion examples would be like flood insurance, which generally isn’t standard.
I explained in detail why not mandatory insurance. You dressing it up as some sort of responsible duty is baloney. I already pay for insurance I can barely afford that covers me putting a hole in my hand by mistake. I am all for education and proper storage and use. If you are sincere that is your intent, I believe one could come up with a lot better promotion of safety and education than this half baked scheme.
LOL. Wow. Ok, well. Yeah. Yes I would like to see less suicides, accidents, and homicides. Your insurance scheme does pretty much NOTHING to curb those numbers - other than maybe reduce the number of owners, which would have some effect on the numbers. Maybe.
Well here is where we really aren’t making sense. I was arguing against the overall concept of mandatory insurance at all. But now, so, what, I have a super low premium for the “right kind” of fire arm, but a super high premium for the “wrong kind”? Is that what we are getting at? And after all these careful calculations and permutations are made on how dangerous my “arsenal” is, I can make the responsible decision to sell off the ones I can’t afford to keep? Unless I make good money, then I can keep them all and, LOL, it sucks to be poor.
I… I am sorry, what benefits did you mention above? That they are more likely to properly store the one “right kind” of firearm they can barely afford to legally keep?
You acknowledge that this scheme smacks of classism and racism, yet you persist with it? Because… why? The commenter above seems to feel it is in their own best interest, do you agree?
I am so glad you self identified as an “elite”, because then it isn’t ad hominem when I call you an elitist.
Switzerland, by the way, has a lot of fully-automatic military rifles sitting in a lot of households. Somehow they don’t have close to the same per-capita casualty rate that the U.S. does. Thoughts on why that is?
You’ve made it clear that you’re OK with not doing something (mandatory insurance, not “extra” insurance) that could reduce that number by a significant proportion. I take the opposite view.
The most important purpose of the mandatory insurance, as I discussed before, was to promote better practises for firearms owners. The insurance business model, while being the primary mechanism, is a secondary concern in that regard. I’ve been very clear and open that I see this as a market-based alternative to achieve what Second Amendment fundies ironically won’t allow the state to do as a matter of law: require that any private citizen who wants to own a firearm is indeed well-trained by an expert in the safe and effective use, care, and storage of their weapon (I’ll give everyone a pass on marching up and down the square and other martial requirements of a well-regulated militia).
You explained why not from a lot of other angles, not the least of which is that you’d have to pay for it. I was asking “why not” from the point of view of promoting better practises amongst firearms owners.
And I am sincere in my intent. I also believe that one could come up with a lot better promotion of safety and education, but it would involve more regulation by the state and we both know that’s not on the menu in America.
Good. I’ve suggested a way to do it, based on the successful model of mandatory auto insurance and the associated discounts for good practises. It’s more than a “maybe.”
Assuming you were a non-rural resident or non-industrial user, you’d have a lower premium for a revolver or shotgun than you would for an semi-auto rifle, the same way you’d have a higher premium for a Porsche in the city than you would for a Honda. It’s not a question of “right” and “wrong”, it’s a question of the item’s power and potential to cause serious harm to others. Not all weapons are equal in rate of fire, cartridge size and spread, range, accuracy, etc. That plays into intended use.
And yes, one of the reasons it sucks to be poor is that you can’t amass collections of nice expensive things like firearms, with or without insurance. What you really seem to be talking about is your personal situation, and if you’re a poor person in the city or burbs and also have an “arsenal” it’s more cause for curiosity than it is a description of a poor urbanite’s typical scenario.
Again: promotion of best storage, maintenance, training, etc. practises. More consideration of whether one truly needs a certain weapon (or many of them) for a given purpose, as befits pricey items designed to kill and injure.* Potential reduction of annual firearms-related deaths and injuries in the U.S. by 1% or more. A dozen or so lives not needlessly cut short, several hundred people not needlessly injured each year. If that cost me $150-200/yr in premiums after discounts to keep my hypothetical .44, I’d pay it.
[* note: this is not the same as telling someone what decision to make once they consider the issue]
Tell you what, I’d be willing to put a hard three-year limit on it to see how the stats work out. If they don’t shift lower by at least 1% the experiment is over. Otherwise, it continues another three years. Rinse and repeat. I’m not a betting man, but I’d put money on things coming out as I predict and the experiment becoming permanent after year six.
I did not. I acknowledge that there is a negative externality for poor people in the form of a regressive mandatory fee. That’s not deliberate class warfare, and certainly not deliberate racial warfare.
I’ve never regarded it as an insult in and of itself, so feel free. I know what I come from, and I happen to believe that society is better led by educated experts (preferably the non-bigoted and empathetic kind) than by blowhard Know-Nothings of the sort who go bankrupt running casino resorts.
Unlike the naughty right-wing elitists, I don’t particularly care about the colour of the expert’s skin, his religion, if he went to an Ivy League School, if he grew up in privileged circumstances, if he is a she, etc. Also unlike the right-wing elitists, I don’t see it as license for him to get too intrusive into people’s private lives and harmless activities. I just like to see competent, talented, smart and educated people running the show and giving all people equal options to live their lives as they wish while also putting in place policies promoting the general welfare (e.g. programmes that encourage firearms safety for those who own them).
Woah there- speak to the arguments I made and please don’t accuse me of holding beliefs I don’t. Nothing I said suggests that I believe all poor people are the same or prone to violence- only a disingenuous person would suggest that. I will leave aside your preposterous accusations that I would somehow support stop and frisk or other discriminatory practices- it’s not even close to an analogous scenario. I’ll try to not misconstrue your position if you will do me the same courtesy.
Increasing the cost of gun ownership is not the same as “disenfranchisement” by any stretch of the imagination, just as taxes on cigarettes isn’t either. I am of course sympathetic to your valid points about how minorities have suffered under laws passed with the best (and worst) of intentions. I don’t want that to happen. But I also don’t think that should stop us from attempting to construct a safer society for everyone as long as we do not unduly burden some minority. That’s where the “unduly” part comes in. I think we disagree at a basic level about the significance of a gun in an individuals life- you view them as a means of protection, where I view them as a safety hazard that are very occasionally useful.
Switzerland, by the way, has a lot of fully-automatic military rifles sitting in a lot of households. Somehow they don’t have close to the same per-capita casualty rate that the U.S. does. Thoughts on why that is?[/quote]
We generally think we know why, general socioeconomic stratification/income inequality (poverty, inequality, crime issues somewhat particular to the US). But if you are suggesting we should distribute automatic weapons to improve safety, ok, sign me up.
We have an organization that is already voluntarily funded by gun owners working all across the nation providing free/low cost education. Police & military training, safe storage and handling, safety publications, live classes, all of these things are provided ubiquitously in the US by the NRA. What would your mandatory insurance provide? It is simply a tax to make people attend classes? These educational resources already exist, provided on a voluntary basis with man hours and funding from firearm owners.
Assuming you were a non-rural resident or non-industrial user, you’d have a lower premium for a revolver or shotgun than you would for an semi-auto rifle, the same way you’d have a higher premium for a Porsche in the city than you would for a Honda. It’s not a question of “right” and “wrong”, it’s a question of the item’s power and potential to cause serious harm to others. Not all weapons are equal in rate of fire, cartridge size and spread, range, accuracy, etc. That plays into intended use.
And yes, one of the reasons it sucks to be poor is that you can’t amass collections of nice expensive things like firearms, with or without insurance. What you really seem to be talking about is your personal situation, and if you’re a poor person in the city or burbs and also have an “arsenal” it’s more cause for curiousity than it is a description of a poor urbanite’s typical scenario.[/quote]
So how will you feel when they come for your Gigaflopping CPU because general purpose computers that are DRM and backdoor free are a threat to society because botnets. Most incidents do not involve high round counts, you are solving for extremely uncommon scenarios. Your suggestion of these premium differences already suggests to me that you don’t have a strong understanding of the uses of firearms in crimes and violence.
You asked about your pre-emptive strike, wasn’t that what this was all aboot?
I still disagree with your point that this would dis-proportionally affect the poor. If there are few deaths and few injuries, a safe gun owner who buys a gun lock and takes a firearms safety course will get a very low rate. Why do you assume a poor person cannot do this? Do you assume the liability insurance for a “a very low occurrence rate” will be exorbitant? If he is a poor and reckless person he can’t afford to do this, yes. But that is a societal good, a reckless person, no matter what his pocketbook does or does not contain, should not have a gun. Mandatory participation for car insurance is also a societal good. It gives people an incentive to keep their cars up, to drive carefully, penalizing bad driving as well as drunk driving and rewards responsible car ownership generally. Why is this wrong for guns and right for cars?
Poor people have a harder time affording things. Great insight. But poor people can and do afford whatever they can. Having a gun is expensive and maybe some person out there who can’t buy one and pay insurance will have to go without. Lots of people without the means for a car rely on the bus. I guess the folks who can’t afford a gun will have to use a baseball bat until they can afford a gun.
No, it’s because they regulate the hell out of all firearms in the country. Those automatic weapons have to be locked up and sealed tight, and if you take them out without a good reason (in Switzerland this boils down to the country being invaded) you’re in big trouble. That’s because the weapons are meant for use there by a Second-Amendment-style militia, and drilling and training (or “regulation” as we called it here in olden times) is mandatory. Still ready to sign up?
The NRA is an avowedly right-wing and highly partisan organisation whose primary mission since the 1980s has been lobbying on behalf of the firearms industry. The free/low-cost (and membership-roll inflating) education is helpful but that sort of thing hasn’t been their main concern since their internal coup in 1977 (fun fact: one of the guys who took over was also a murderer).
More people taking those NRA courses, for one thing. Also, not giving a discount on insurance premiums due to not fulfilling a requirement is not a tax.
They’ll only waste time coming for my Gigaflopping CPU if they’ve identified at as running a botnet, and then only if the botnet threatens critical infrastructure. That’s called standard a criminal investigation.
But that’s beside the point. I’m not proposing taking anyone’s firearms, I’m talking about requiring insurance to own them. If my particular type and power of CPU was involved in botnet crimes that killed and injured thousands of people every year, I wouldn’t mind required insurance tacked onto it.
Enlighten me. For starters, tell me why someone living in a suburban tract home in a middle-class neighbourhood would need an AR-15 for household self-defense. That one remains a puzzle for me, not to mention for the Iraq veterans and cops I know.
No. I suggested in a subsequent comment that I should use it pre-emptively in the future, as it’s always the same lame objection from Second Amendment fundies, most of whom spend the rest of their time not caring a whit about social and economic justice.
[quote=“gracchus, post:87, topic:97085, full:true”]
No, it’s because they regulate the hell out of all firearms in the country. Those automatic weapons have to be locked up tight, and if you take them out without a good reason (in Switzerland this boils down to the country being invaded) you’re in big trouble. That’s because the weapons are meant for use by a Second-Amendment-style militia. [/quote]
So they don’t really own them for personal use and it isn’t usefully comparable to US ownership at all?
Get to know more NRA members, particularly in diverse communities. Most of the education, while coordinated and developed at the national level, is maintained and distributed by the members in the local communities who don’t reflect this at all.
Is the NRA overall really miscast? Probably not, but the lack of recognition of the educational work done is simply willful ignorance.
Imposing a government mandated cost (insurance) is a tax.
So why not only prosecute firearms violence for those committing acts of violence, why impose on all gun/computer owners?
but since you are for the insurance scheme, mmkay then, enjoy that mandatory insurance. The government isn’t particularly good at making the distinctions you think they can regarding premiums. Start counting the embedded CPUs in your home, that insurance is going to add up fast.
[quote=“gracchus, post:87, topic:97085, full:true”]
Enlighten me. For starters, tell me why someone living in a suburban tract home in a middle-class neighbourhood would need an AR-15 for household self-defense. That one remains a puzzle for me, not to mention for the Iraq veterans I know.[/quote]
I didn’t say they were. Long arms in general account for a very low percentage of firearms used in crimes. AR and AK type weapons even fewer. Your insurance scheme is based on utility. The utility in regulation based on statistics would not place a high value on the most “scary” and demonized firearms types which splash the media pages.
Oh well, too bad its closed, back to the usual thread drift.
In review of the video/gif and Cooper’s Four Rules: RULE 1 ALL GUNS ARE ALWAYS LOADED
pass
RULE 2 NEVER LET THE MUZZLE COVER ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT PREPARED TO DESTROY
pass, I guess we are okay with shooting the ceiling as an employee
RULE 3 KEEP YOUR FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER TIL YOUR SIGHTS ARE ON THE TARGET FAIL
(As Cooper wisely said, “This we call the Golden Rule because its violation is responsible for about 80 percent of the firearms disasters we read about.”)
RULE 4 BE SURE OF YOUR TARGET
Pass I guess
3/4 RULES - no one got hurt. Generally you have to be at a 2/4 level for an injury to occur.
You’re saying that as if I said it was comparable. If anyone made that assumption (“sign me up!”) it was you.
I’m talking about the organisation, not the members.
Not quite. A tax is a tax. This is what’s called a mandate, and there’s a substantive legal and economic difference. Take the ACA as an example: the government mandated that people buy insurance, but it didn’t sell it itself. The insurance companies gave discounts for things like not smoking. Contrast to a single-payer universal system, which is usually tax funded.
Because the point is to encourage safety practises across the widest number of firearms owners possible.
The insurance companies will make those distinctions. And organisations like the EFF and ACLU will make sure that the government leans on them to be more technically accurate if they don’t. I’d expect nothing less from the NRA under my scheme.
No, it would be based on things like rate of fire, cartridge size and spread, etc. And again, the goal is to encourage good safety and training practises.
And you’re correct, long arms aren’t used much in crimes. Which is the first reason why the person I described (not hypothetical, I’m afraid) is an idiot
I’m torn whether to be surprised or not that you’re making excuses for the moron in the video. My review:
Rule 1: Fail, since he pointed a loaded weapon up-range (upward or downward doesn’t matter) with his finger on the trigger, even worse with other people around him. There’s a reason that guy next to him ducks away. That is not someone who is respecting his weapon’s loaded status.
Rule 2: I’ll give him a pass there. He wasn’t deliberately aiming … at anything (see Rule 4)
Rule 3: Fail, for obvious reasons.
Rule 4: Fail. He was not aiming at any target when the weapon discharged, let alone sure the weapon was trained on it.
1/4 rules. He has no business being a trainer, and as others here have said he’s lucky no-one (including himself) got hurt. Heck, I witnessed one guy get hurt for getting 3/4 – life lesson: don’t break Rule 2 around a Marine and then say it was “no big deal.”
No. When there’s a gun accident, there’s people tripping over themselves to explain that obviously those involved weren’t responsible gun owners, because if they were, that never would have happened. This even holds true when the people involved are police - with plenty of people willing to further claim that law enforcement really aren’t very competent with guns, despite the average gun owner having little to no training, and the number of civilians with more training being vanishingly small.
No one makes those claims when it comes to car accidents because everyone knows - and is willing to admit - that cars are inherently dangerous and being a safe driver doesn’t eliminate accidents.
After a long and interesting thread, I think I’m going to have to agree (in part) with @Mister44. I don’t see insurance changing things much when it comes to behavior except by reducing access through cost, which ends up looking a lot like a sin tax.
I’m going to support more of @Mister44’s ideas* like mandatory gunlocks, mandatory training, and smart trigger locks on guns to prevent the apprenetly small number of accidents and firearm misuse by otherwise law-abiding citizens. Also, increasing penalties for misuse of firearms and imposing strict liabaility for gun related injuries. The market based approach has merits in theory, but I think a regulatory approach is more likely to be effective.
Thanks everyone for participating and keeping it (mostly) civil. I’ve quite enjoyed the debate!
*these are his ideas, though he might not see it that way, so I expect some blowback from this comment
Scott Adams actually suggested the Swiss solution for the US. Allow unrestricted guns. Ban ammunition.
It has been interesting reading this thread because from a European perspective everybody seems to be coming out with increasingly convoluted arguments intended to ignore the 800lb gorilla in the corner - not the Second Amendment, but why a culture exists in which gun ownership and use is so fetishised.
My own experience, in military R&D and talking to friends in the Army, is that the US, both the army and in general, seems have an extremely cavalier attitude to weapons safety compared to the rest of NATO. Air burst nuclear tests and Castle Bravo at one end, incidents like this one at the other. The only other large country that seems comparable is Russia, and given the history of invasion it is perhaps unsurprising. The US has never had a military threat that requires a large civil militia to hold off since the War of Independence. What is the problem?
The left often talks (somewhat facetiously) about how things will be different “when the revolution comes” but the fact is, the revolution already came, and it wasn’t the left leading the charge.
If he’s for all those things being mandatory I’m all for it. It accomplishes some of my same goals through law rather than the market, which I readily acknowledge as a workaround. Thanks for your contributions as well.
