6 ms·

I don't think the title represents the content very well. "Gun control" is a rather broad topic and her research is clearly narrowly focused on item-specific sa

by kharms 9y ago

I don't think the title represents the content very well. "Gun control" is a rather broad topic and her research is clearly narrowly focused on item-specific sales restrictions. Personally I'm a proponent of mandatory gun insurance and owner liability. This would align incentives to reduce gun violence: safe storage, less lethal rounds & weapons, mental health checks, trainings, age-tied pricing, etc. It won't stop all gun violence, but nothing short of a constitutional amendment can even get us close to stopping all gun violence.

etchalon 9y ago
I've become a greater and greater fan of mandatory liability insurance for firearms, and a requirement no sale can be completed until the vendor verifies that the purchases possess that insurance.
- stmfreak 9y ago
  The insurance industry loves this idea. But who benefits? How do you calculate the payouts? And what about criminals using stolen guns? How do you get them to pay for insurance?
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > How do you calculate the payouts? Calculating damages for injuries is something tort law covers already, not a new area. Determining what liabilities must be covered, and to what minimum level, would be new. > And what about criminals using stolen guns? How do you get them to pay for insurance? If gun owners are liable for securing there guns, and that is part of the liability that must be insured, that's covered. Illegally manufactured or imported guns aren't, though.
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
>Personally I'm a proponent of mandatory gun insurance and owner liability. That would just be a way to make people who are young, not white, live in higher crime areas, etc, etc pay more. Shooting something/someone you shouldn't be shooting is incredibly rare so either premiums would be negligible or they would have be be artificially high (vice tax). Furthermore it would also be fought every step of the way by anyone who doesn't want a registration scheme since it effectively would create one. The idea itself should have a positive impact (at least on paper) since it would presumably make high risk groups less likely to own firearms (at a statistical level) but it's pretty incompatible with something that's right. You don't need to pay for free speech insurance in case you offend someone.
- nostrademons 9y ago
  That may be the intended result, if the desired effect is to limit gun violence without impinging on legitimate owners' rights to own guns. And then higher cost of guns = less gun violence = less need to own a gun = less gun violence = lower cost of insurance = the price reaches an equilibrium where the true cost of owning a gun is equal to the negative externalities it causes. At least that's the theory. It's unclear whether it'll actually play out that way, with the existence of black markets and the general inability to afford a lawyer and sue for damages within these communities.
- etchalon 9y ago
  We currently have a government mandate which demands we have health insurance, which was upheld by SCOTUS. This doesn't seem like that much of a stretch.
  - angersock 9y ago
    How well has everybody been served by that mandate? How much of the current fuckery of healthcare and costs is directly due to the insurance complex? Hint: it's nontrivial, and in fact is a direct cause of rising costs in healthcare.
    - kharms 9y ago
      Car insurance is also a mandate. It works well. The healthcare situation isn't because it's a mandate, it's because of inelastic demand. A situation that's not comparable to gun ownership.
      - angersock 9y ago
        Arguably, in cities without good public transportation, car insurance has inelastic demand too. Further, it's being used to do things like backdoor in ubiquitous surveillance using GPS. One also wonders what the effect car insurance has had on repair costs, for similar reasons as healthcare. My point is that adding an insurance burden onto guns isn't a clear win, unless you assume that further government intervention (by the queerly circuitous route of private-sector insurance involvement the US seems to like) is unquestionably good. It also doesn't make sense to require insure for guns that are used for target shooting a few times a year. Frankly, given the huge number of firearms and owners in this country and the rather small amount of violence they produce, it would probably be a bigger win to ask for mandatory insurance on pools, ladders, fast-food, sugary drinks, and so forth.
piotrkaminski 9y ago
Mandatory insurance sounds promising, but what happens when the insurance lapses and the person still owns the guns? Does the government go in and repossess their guns? Does it force them to pay somehow? Doesn't seem practical.
TheGRS 9y ago
The frustration lately is that there are a number of relatively easy-to-implement policies that don't "take your guns away", like many of the ones you mentioned. Yet, since Sandy Hook nothing has been done and the mass shootings continue. Try something.
- angersock 9y ago
  In the grand scheme of these things, large spree killings like Sandy Hook, Orlando, and even this most recent tragedy are pretty infrequent. There is a great deal of pathos and "something must be done!" but, especially given the history of gun control in America and given the current political situation, extreme caution and conservatism is the order of the day. I appreciate how terrible all this must seem--especially for the increasingly gun-ignorant elite and urban population that is susceptible to a lot of the outrage porn--but we really need to be careful about the road increased gun control or confiscation would set us down.
  - hsod 9y ago
    This comment coyly hints at arguments but doesn't make any. Why is extreme caution and conservatism the order of the day? What history of gun control and political situation are you referring to? Why do you think this isn't as terrible as it seems to the gun-ignorant? What road would increased gun control set us down?
    - angersock 9y ago
      > Why is extreme caution and conservatism the order of the day? Simply put: this was instruction #2 in the BIOS of our country. The people who went to such lengths to gain independence said that allowing an armed populace without government infringement was second only to free speech and religion. This was deliberate. We've also already had forced confiscations of US citizens during Katrina [5]. We all saw how well that worked out, caused as it was by miscommunication of overlapping agencies despite standing directions not to do so [6]. The reason that caution and conservation are called for is simple: once you allow the government to confiscate firearms, you don't get them back. It's a one-way street, and a street that historically ends with massive oppression of the populace and corruption of law enforcement. > What history of gun control and political situation are you referring to? Wikipedia[1] has a quick overview, but the overall theme is continual erosion of the ability of gun owners to possess and maintain relevant firearms. One of the only things preventing this is the continued efforts of the Supreme Court, as seen in cases like District of Colombia v. Heller[2] and the incorporation of same under McDonald v. City of Chicago[3]. As for the political situation, I'll sketch it thusly: do you think that the well-documented issues of police violence would be better or worse (given existing officers) if they knew that the average citizen was unarmed? Do you feel safer under a Trump presidency or somebody worse if the average citizen was unarmed? During the LA Riots, was Koreatown [4] kept safer by having armed citizens? Using a relevant historical example, in the United States the civil rights movement only really made progress once the Overton window was pulled over by armed extremists and peaceful positions like Dr. King's were seen to be a much more manageable compromise and were made to happen. > Why do you think this isn't as terrible as it seems to the gun-ignorant? To be frank: the gun-ignorant typically don't even have the language to understand the danger of firearms in context. Terms like "assault weapon"[9] were created to avoid more accurate (and thus less able to be abused) terms like "assault rifle". Emphasizing "semi-automatic" whenever reporting weapons use, because it sounds kinda like "automatic" and that's scary (even though legally-obtained automatic weapons are basically never used in crimes or shootings--typically instead we see illegal weapons or weapons modified to be automatic). Pointing out "armor-piercing" rounds when that's more a function of caliber and design of round and type of armor, and that being used to limit import and sale of perfectly reasonable (and environmentally friendly!) steel-core rounds. Then you have stuff like people freaking out about Ghost Guns[10], which are perfectly legal to create and own and frankly which are the same thing people were doing a hundred years ago with lengths of pipe and rubber bands[11]. The thing is, though, that numbers for how many of those improvised and home-manufactured weapons have actually been used are a little hard to come by. But you wouldn't know that from looking at media coverage or from political stump speeches! The language of gun control has been distorted beyond-belief by both sides[7], and news coverage tends to misidentify weapons badly or to (for example, in Rolling Stone[8]) use such vague phrasing as to paint all firearms as problems. And yes, these shootings are terrible, but gun violence has been decreasing for quite some time now[12], and as one of this author's colleagues has pointed out[13] there is a lot more at work around gun deaths than a massacre like this would have you imagine. > What road would increased gun control set us down? Frankly, I think it'd further our slide into a despotic nation, ruled over by jack-booted thugs and plagued with petty and organized crime. At best, this results in an eventual rebellion and widespread disturbance of the peace and at worst this results in a genuine police state where ubiquitous surveillance and armed police punish and torture citizens for the indefinite future when it suits them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_United_States#20th_century [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald_v._City_of_Chicago [4] https://en.wikipedia.or /wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots#Korean_Americans_during_the_riots [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf8trl69kzo [6] https://www.thetrace.org/2015/08/nra-hurricane-katrina-gun-confiscation/ [7] http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2013/02/26/172882077/loaded-words-how-language-shapes-the-gun-debate [8] http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/pictures/the-5-most-dangerous-guns-in-america-20140714/revolvers-0375671 [9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_weapon#History_of_terminology [10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_gun [11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_firearm [12] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/03/weve-had-a-massive-decline-in-gun-violence-in-the-united-states-heres-why/ [13] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mass-shootings-are-a-bad-way-to-understand-gun-violence/

by kharms 9y ago

etchalon 9y ago

I've become a greater and greater fan of mandatory liability insurance for firearms, and a requirement no sale can be completed until the vendor verifies that the purchases possess that insurance.

stmfreak 9y ago
The insurance industry loves this idea. But who benefits? How do you calculate the payouts? And what about criminals using stolen guns? How do you get them to pay for insurance?
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > How do you calculate the payouts? Calculating damages for injuries is something tort law covers already, not a new area. Determining what liabilities must be covered, and to what minimum level, would be new. > And what about criminals using stolen guns? How do you get them to pay for insurance? If gun owners are liable for securing there guns, and that is part of the liability that must be insured, that's covered. Illegally manufactured or imported guns aren't, though.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

>Personally I'm a proponent of mandatory gun insurance and owner liability. That would just be a way to make people who are young, not white, live in higher crime areas, etc, etc pay more. Shooting something/someone you shouldn't be shooting is incredibly rare so either premiums would be negligible or they would have be be artificially high (vice tax). Furthermore it would also be fought every step of the way by anyone who doesn't want a registration scheme since it effectively would create one. The idea itself should have a positive impact (at least on paper) since it would presumably make high risk groups less likely to own firearms (at a statistical level) but it's pretty incompatible with something that's right. You don't need to pay for free speech insurance in case you offend someone.

nostrademons 9y ago
That may be the intended result, if the desired effect is to limit gun violence without impinging on legitimate owners' rights to own guns. And then higher cost of guns = less gun violence = less need to own a gun = less gun violence = lower cost of insurance = the price reaches an equilibrium where the true cost of owning a gun is equal to the negative externalities it causes. At least that's the theory. It's unclear whether it'll actually play out that way, with the existence of black markets and the general inability to afford a lawyer and sue for damages within these communities.
etchalon 9y ago
We currently have a government mandate which demands we have health insurance, which was upheld by SCOTUS. This doesn't seem like that much of a stretch.
- angersock 9y ago
  How well has everybody been served by that mandate? How much of the current fuckery of healthcare and costs is directly due to the insurance complex? Hint: it's nontrivial, and in fact is a direct cause of rising costs in healthcare.
  - kharms 9y ago
    Car insurance is also a mandate. It works well. The healthcare situation isn't because it's a mandate, it's because of inelastic demand. A situation that's not comparable to gun ownership.
    - angersock 9y ago
      Arguably, in cities without good public transportation, car insurance has inelastic demand too. Further, it's being used to do things like backdoor in ubiquitous surveillance using GPS. One also wonders what the effect car insurance has had on repair costs, for similar reasons as healthcare. My point is that adding an insurance burden onto guns isn't a clear win, unless you assume that further government intervention (by the queerly circuitous route of private-sector insurance involvement the US seems to like) is unquestionably good. It also doesn't make sense to require insure for guns that are used for target shooting a few times a year. Frankly, given the huge number of firearms and owners in this country and the rather small amount of violence they produce, it would probably be a bigger win to ask for mandatory insurance on pools, ladders, fast-food, sugary drinks, and so forth.

piotrkaminski 9y ago

Mandatory insurance sounds promising, but what happens when the insurance lapses and the person still owns the guns? Does the government go in and repossess their guns? Does it force them to pay somehow? Doesn't seem practical.

TheGRS 9y ago

The frustration lately is that there are a number of relatively easy-to-implement policies that don't "take your guns away", like many of the ones you mentioned. Yet, since Sandy Hook nothing has been done and the mass shootings continue. Try something.

angersock 9y ago
In the grand scheme of these things, large spree killings like Sandy Hook, Orlando, and even this most recent tragedy are pretty infrequent. There is a great deal of pathos and "something must be done!" but, especially given the history of gun control in America and given the current political situation, extreme caution and conservatism is the order of the day. I appreciate how terrible all this must seem--especially for the increasingly gun-ignorant elite and urban population that is susceptible to a lot of the outrage porn--but we really need to be careful about the road increased gun control or confiscation would set us down.
- hsod 9y ago
  This comment coyly hints at arguments but doesn't make any. Why is extreme caution and conservatism the order of the day? What history of gun control and political situation are you referring to? Why do you think this isn't as terrible as it seems to the gun-ignorant? What road would increased gun control set us down?
  - angersock 9y ago
    > Why is extreme caution and conservatism the order of the day? Simply put: this was instruction #2 in the BIOS of our country. The people who went to such lengths to gain independence said that allowing an armed populace without government infringement was second only to free speech and religion. This was deliberate. We've also already had forced confiscations of US citizens during Katrina [5]. We all saw how well that worked out, caused as it was by miscommunication of overlapping agencies despite standing directions not to do so [6]. The reason that caution and conservation are called for is simple: once you allow the government to confiscate firearms, you don't get them back. It's a one-way street, and a street that historically ends with massive oppression of the populace and corruption of law enforcement. > What history of gun control and political situation are you referring to? Wikipedia[1] has a quick overview, but the overall theme is continual erosion of the ability of gun owners to possess and maintain relevant firearms. One of the only things preventing this is the continued efforts of the Supreme Court, as seen in cases like District of Colombia v. Heller[2] and the incorporation of same under McDonald v. City of Chicago[3]. As for the political situation, I'll sketch it thusly: do you think that the well-documented issues of police violence would be better or worse (given existing officers) if they knew that the average citizen was unarmed? Do you feel safer under a Trump presidency or somebody worse if the average citizen was unarmed? During the LA Riots, was Koreatown [4] kept safer by having armed citizens? Using a relevant historical example, in the United States the civil rights movement only really made progress once the Overton window was pulled over by armed extremists and peaceful positions like Dr. King's were seen to be a much more manageable compromise and were made to happen. > Why do you think this isn't as terrible as it seems to the gun-ignorant? To be frank: the gun-ignorant typically don't even have the language to understand the danger of firearms in context. Terms like "assault weapon"[9] were created to avoid more accurate (and thus less able to be abused) terms like "assault rifle". Emphasizing "semi-automatic" whenever reporting weapons use, because it sounds kinda like "automatic" and that's scary (even though legally-obtained automatic weapons are basically never used in crimes or shootings--typically instead we see illegal weapons or weapons modified to be automatic). Pointing out "armor-piercing" rounds when that's more a function of caliber and design of round and type of armor, and that being used to limit import and sale of perfectly reasonable (and environmentally friendly!) steel-core rounds. Then you have stuff like people freaking out about Ghost Guns[10], which are perfectly legal to create and own and frankly which are the same thing people were doing a hundred years ago with lengths of pipe and rubber bands[11]. The thing is, though, that numbers for how many of those improvised and home-manufactured weapons have actually been used are a little hard to come by. But you wouldn't know that from looking at media coverage or from political stump speeches! The language of gun control has been distorted beyond-belief by both sides[7], and news coverage tends to misidentify weapons badly or to (for example, in Rolling Stone[8]) use such vague phrasing as to paint all firearms as problems. And yes, these shootings are terrible, but gun violence has been decreasing for quite some time now[12], and as one of this author's colleagues has pointed out[13] there is a lot more at work around gun deaths than a massacre like this would have you imagine. > What road would increased gun control set us down? Frankly, I think it'd further our slide into a despotic nation, ruled over by jack-booted thugs and plagued with petty and organized crime. At best, this results in an eventual rebellion and widespread disturbance of the peace and at worst this results in a genuine police state where ubiquitous surveillance and armed police punish and torture citizens for the indefinite future when it suits them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_United_States#20th_century [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald_v._City_of_Chicago [4] https://en.wikipedia.or /wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots#Korean_Americans_during_the_riots [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf8trl69kzo [6] https://www.thetrace.org/2015/08/nra-hurricane-katrina-gun-confiscation/ [7] http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2013/02/26/172882077/loaded-words-how-language-shapes-the-gun-debate [8] http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/pictures/the-5-most-dangerous-guns-in-america-20140714/revolvers-0375671 [9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_weapon#History_of_terminology [10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_gun [11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_firearm [12] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/03/weve-had-a-massive-decline-in-gun-violence-in-the-united-states-heres-why/ [13] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mass-shootings-are-a-bad-way-to-understand-gun-violence/