I am not a woman of many words so I'll put my 4 point plan (lol) out here for the community to discuss (hopefully).
1- Require every gun owner to buy insurance on every weapon they own. Separately. One insurance per weapon.
2- Tax ammo. A lot.
3- Make it illegal to buy ammo without insurance for the particular weapon.
4- Buy back and/or offer tax credits for surrendered weapons.
PROS
- We can avoid the whole 2nd Amendment argument. Anyone can buy weapons as long as they are willing to pay for and capable of getting insurance. Insurance companies will do the vetting.
- Unregistered weapons cannot be insured so owners cannot buy ammo for those weapons.
- This plan separates the "responsible" gun owners from the "irresponsible" ones so it will put a lid on that NRA argument. Sheesh.
- It is about taking personal responsibility.
CJ WIHorse added some other advantages:
- "insurance actuaries determine the risks of types of firearms and behavior."
- "Let the insurance industry fight the gun lobby -- greed versus greed."
- "Firearm insurance would not violate the 2nd amendment and would with $$ out of pocket start us on reversing the ease of gun ownership. If it cost the average person a couple of thousand dollars PER gun PER year then lots of people would sell their guns via government buyback."
- "... gun dealers would need to carry HUGE policies. This would get rid of a lot of gun dealers."
Dogs are fuzzy mentioned that in realpolitik terms:
- "The insurance companies would lobby for it in order to get new income. Easier to pass as a result."
CONS
- It is putting a price on human life. But right now people are being killed without anyone paying any price.
- We're not getting an immediate assault weapon ban. But it will be very costly to have them insured because of the high risk of multiple injuries and killings.
- There will be a period of uninsured assaults. But since the ammo will run out for those weapons after a while it will be a smaller portion of assaults in time.
- Insurance fraud.
It is awful to talk about human life in money terms and I know no amount of money can replace the 26 angels that we lost this Friday in Connecticut but this plan might help reduce gun violence.