If we forced gun owners to insure their weapons for liability, the insurance industry would explain - in dollars and cents - how dangerous having a gun in your house is versus NOT having a gun.
If every gun purchaser had to also purchase liability insurance for their death machine (that's what guns literally are), far fewer of them would purchase guns - because they couldn't afford the insurance bite.
I wonder if that's why we've never forced the owners of a device designed to KILL people to take FINANCIAL responsibility for their possession. Cars kill people BY ACCIDENT yet we're all forced - by law - to insure ourselves in case something UNEXPECTED happens.
The gun industry has bamboozled America to literal death.
@Alan While I agree that this would be helpful. The main difference is that cars and the right to drive are not enshrined in our constitution. From a legal perspective, it makes something like this nearly impossible to do.
Maybe something like this, or a public health tax approach, would work on the ammunition? Who knows. But those useless R's in the house and senate are certainly not going to do anything even remotely helpful.
@mikey_in_sd I would argue that guns aren't actually enshrined in the Constitution either. Our current reading of the 2A is utter bullshit. The gun lobby has us believing the 2A says things it most certainly does not. I don't know what gun rights Americans actually have, but basing those rights on the 2A is a crock of shit. Individual gun ownership was not the thing the 2A was remedying. Not even remotely. Most importantly, the word "own" appears nowhere in the 2A. "Own" was a perfectly good word back then. It meant then exactly what it means now. And James Madison knew that - and that neither "keep" nor "bear" equaled "own". Otherwise, he would have spared the extra ink it took to write two more words he knew he didn't need.
@Alan @mikey_in_sd Well, if the Roberts court cured us of anything, it's the notion of settled law and binding precedent. It's just a matter of getting a favorable #SCOTUS composition as well as some timely cases making their way through the courts
@thomas_decker I think what you're really seeing is a better sorting out of what is actually settled law.
It's that just declaring a law to be settled doesn't make it so, so law that has always been on shaky ground despite proponents insisting that it is settled is being called out as such and reevaluated.
If anything this reinforces the notion of settled law and binding precedent by emphasizing what it means to be that.
A lot of unsettled law is being called out for being actually unsettled, while actually settled law benefits from that.
@volkris @Alan @mikey_in_sd So yeah I would call all 2nd amendment rulings since Heller unsettled law then.
John Paul Stevens explains it better than me why: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/john-paul-stevens-court-failed-gun-control/587272/
@thomas_decker rulings are settled. The law is not. Huge difference.
