Fact: if every gun owner had to insure every gun in their possession (and the penalties for NOT insuring were crushingly astronomical), America would not have a gun problem today.
The gun lobby has so bamboozled America that we’ve forgotten what guns are and what they aren’t. Forget what nonsense anyone uses to explain their gun purchase. They’re answering the wrong question. We shouldn’t ask “why do you need a gun?” – it’s too generic and it avoids the fact of what guns really are. The whole point of a gun’s design – the physics, the chemistry, the technology, the arrangement of gun parts across the device – is to send a piece of metal flying at speed across space and into a living target, the goal being to kill it. How can that NOT be your goal? You may not “want” to kill the living creature you just fired at, but killing them is one of the very real possibilities that firing your gun at them could produce. Killing someone was always a possibility the moment you took the gun from its gun safe (something guns aren’t designed to do – sit in a safe ). The true measure of whether or not someone’s a “responsible” gun owner begins the moment they give their gun a chance to do the thing they purchased it to do: kill.
Fact: no gun owner can say with one hundred percent certainty that once the gun is out and about – however it got there – that nothing unexpected will happen. No one can say accidents won’t or can’t happen. So – death is always a possibility when one purchases a death machine. So, the question isn’t “why did you buy a gun?”, it’s “why did you buy a death machine?” Hey, if Joe Citizen looks at the rest of us and honestly thinks they need that much protection from us? That’s not on us, that’s on John.
The Second Amendment – as written (not as reimagined by the gun lobby) is pro gun CONTROL. It contextualizes gun possession from a “well regulated militia’s” point of view – a militia being a group with combined mutual interests, safety above all – and puts the decision of who gets to “keep and bear” (it doesn’t use the word “own”) these arms – the REGULATION part – in the militia’s hands. In the absence of a defined militia, We The People become it. Our majority voice speaks for the militia. The majority of Americans (not being gun owners themselves) continue to speak clearly and distinctly about how WE feel the militia should handle these decisions – who gets to “keep and bear arms”. The militia – We The People – get to regulate however we like. The ONLY thing we know about the militia is that is IS regulated. So, why, in our democracy, can’t the militia’s – sorry, the majority’s – regulations and voice get heard?
Because of the gun lobby. The people who manufacture guns are exceptional at selling their product. They succeeded in turning the NRA from a gun safety organization into a gun manufacturer’s pimp.
Think of a shooting from the gun’s point of view. It’s guilty of nothing. It did what the person holding it wanted: it told everyone else that the person holding it had the power to kill them dead.
A lot of money has been spent on reframing how Americans – unlike any other people on earth – think about death machines. In Michigan, they just passed a law allowing high school students to conceal carry at school. Think about it… that KID (that’s what any 18 year old boy is) in Michigan needs to pass tests and get licensed to drive his car to school. His folks need to insure the car – and insure him – because cars, though designed to transport people from point A to point B – when driven by fallible human beings (like an 18 year old boy) – can do something they WEREN’T designed to do: hurt or kill people. Ah, but, as trained as our young man is as a driver, as licensed and insured as he is, no such qualifications apply to the death machine – designed to kill people – this young man has in his pocket.
Did I say “young man”? I meant ANGRY young man…
The reason there’s no such thing as “responsible gun ownership’ is because 1) it’s entirely made up and 2) we don’t mandate it. Gun owners can give their lame excuses for why they need guns (let’s put hunters aside for another day and conversation) and then convince themselves that, yes indeedy, they are what responsible gun owners look like. Know who thought that way? Nancy Lanza. Remember her? Nancy Lanza was Adam Lanza’s mom. Adam Lanza was the Sandy Hook shooter.
Nancy Lanza believe up until she died – unaware because her son shot her while she slept – that SHE was a “responsible gun owner”. You could not have convinced her otherwise. But then something unexpected happened and, before she even knew it, a “responsible” gun owner fell into the “irresponsible gun owner” column. It’s too bad the kids and adults who died at Sandy Hook didn’t get the warning. But, that’s the problem, ya see. We gun non-owners? We never get to know which of you gun owners are really, really responsible and which of you are full of shit until it’s too late. Sorry, but the data set says that “trusting you” that you are one of the responsible ones isn’t a very good idea.
If I get into an accident and I have no insurance, I will be liable. People seeking damages from me will have fair access to anything and everything I own. Irresponsibility’s gotta have a mega-steep price tag otherwise it becomes just one more option for the lazy and stupid. Want to know why gun owners are terrified at the prospect of having to insure their gun purchases? When the bean counters wade in, they’re going to make gun ownership – well, the cost of insuring one’s guns – prohibitively expensive for the majority of gun owners. Because accidents CAN (and do) happen – as the data proves.
Why don’t we mandate gun insurance for every gun purchase? Because of that same bamboozlement. The greedy gun lobby knows that mandated gun insurance will price the majority of their customers out of the market. And all those people with small arsenals? Think of their insurance costs. Because every weapons is a death machine all by itself (whose harm needs to be calculated on the harm it can do when OUT of its safe), every weapon needs to be insured individually. If such a thing came to pass, it would suck to be the gun manufacturers but be great to be in the insurance biz.
It simply can’t be said enough because it is the simple truth: every single gun manufactured is an accident or a tragedy that just hasn’t happened yet.