The most depressing thing I've read in a long time was our own nyceve's diary on how uninsured victims of Aurora gun violence face financial ruin. Here we are, a country which permits military-grade (but for the full auto feature) weapons to be purchased, and full combat armor also to be lawfully purchased, and when having done so, a nutter guns down 70 people, we tell them:
So you got shot. Didn't you read Ayn Rand? Should've planned for that. So fuck you, pay your own medical bills!. Too much for ya? See you in bankruptcy court, unless your friends can have a big enough bake sale.
Well, I am tired of this crap. You know, I'm old enough to remember when RFK and Martin Luther King, Jr. were shot. Don't tell me about
gun rights.
Fuck gun rights. What about people rights? Who's gonna pay for that 6 month baby that got shot with the legally purchased bullet (s)? fired out of the legally purchased AR 15 semi-auto rifle? Gun owners get their rights, oh let us bow down before the wisdom of "Justice" Scalia who gave us DC v. Heller, but when these rights hurt innocent people -- who bears the burden then?
What I propose is a tax on ammunition. I tried to find out how much ammunition is sold in the US every year, but it doesn't seem to be ready to hand. Apparently the armed forces go through 1.8 billion bullets every year (taking, it appears, approximately 250,000 bullets to kill one insurgent), and let's just assume that the civil market for ammunition is just as large. At a tax of $1 per round of ammunition, that would raise $1.8 billion for medical bills of victims of gun violence. Maybe that's not enough, but it's a lot more than the current bake sale method.
Now I know I'll get the usual objection, "guns don't kill people, people do" and I can only respond that when our crop of gun spree klllers take up killing with polonium or orbital death ray satellites, I'll be glad to impose similar taxes on those accoutrements.
Right now, all we get is "thoughts and prayers" and maybe a special mourning theme song on MSNBC. Maybe someone famous will visit you in the hospital.
That's just not fucking enough anymore, not unless "thoughts and prayers" will be accepted as currency by your local hospital's billing department.
These people need money. M-0-N-E-Y. they're not going to get it from the nutjob, so they might as well get it from the people who profit from the system that armed this and all the other nutjobs.
Of course, I might as well be asking for a pink unicorn or a Democratic congress with actual courage. But I'm a good sport. I'll be perfectly willing to post this diary again after the next massacre.