Insuring Gun Rights

It appears as though the window for meaningful regulations of guns has closed, if indeed it were ever open more than a hair's breadth. The well organized lobby called the National Rifle Association, with help from some other organizations, has moved to quickly re-frame the debate on its own terms, and using a mixture of false fears and misinformation to obscure facts and drown out voices of moderation. From a purely academic standpoint their polished demolition of a majority viewpoint is as nearly perfect as anything I've seen, and only my deep disagreement with them keeps me from leaping to my feet with full fledged approbation.

I have mentioned in my earlier post on this topic that the NRA is not an organization that represents gun owners, despite all their posturing to the contrary - it represents the interests of gun manufacturers and gun sellers. Unfortunately, the strong hatred for the political players lined up on the side of gun control blinds people to this very obvious fact. Nothing in the NRA's actual position aids law-abiding gun owners, but the various changes in legislation that they have supported - fewer background checks, no inventory keeping by gun sellers, exempting gun shows from laws on background checks and waiting periods - all help in selling ever more guns to a country that already outguns most of the world (it speaks volumes when Somalia may be one of the few nations that can claim better gun penetration across its population, pun unintended). The NRA taps into an irrational fear of the federal government, maybe even into deeper and darker parts of the mind, when they argue that gun sellers should be allowed to destroy records of gun sales within a day; no other industry has anything approaching that attitude towards records. Tellingly, the fear that the government will use this information to find those who would oppose its potential tyranny does not extend to outrage over, say, warrant-less spying on one's communications or the fact that health insurance companies and credit rating companies (to cite but a couple of examples) collect a lot of information about us and for most part, we don't even question what they know about us or with whom they share this information, including possibly the much maligned federal government. What the NRA does achieve is a world in which it is easy for criminals or straw buyers acting for criminals to freely obtain guns - so much for protecting the rights of law-abiding citizens!

One of the tropes advanced on many forums debating gun control was the argument that more people die per year in auto accidents than from gun homicides, so cars should be banned before guns. This is a false argument on many different levels, since it starts with a conflation of accidental and intentional killing. But more interesting in the choice of this analogy is that these partisans would have been hard pressed to find a more regulated segment than automobiles. They are strongly regulated from the design and manufacturing phase, through every step thereafter. There are laws against driving while drunk, driving and texting, driving underage, driving with an expired license, for starters. One cannot legally drive without a license, and to obtain a license one needs to demonstrate one's expertise in driving. When stopped by the police, for any actual transgression or suspected problem, a driver has to show his license, or face strictures for that failure even if nothing else is blameworthy. And every driver is required to maintain insurance to cover damage that he may, or may not cause while driving. This is actually a perfect idea, and I owe the plan I lay out below to the gun rights advocates who first drew my attention to the level of regulation we accept on cars and the parallels that they see between car and gun ownership. (Not surprising perhaps, given the Bushmaster advertisement that suggested owning an assault rifle conferred a man card upon the owner; in another version, that would have been a Mustang, Camaro or pickup truck).

If there is one thing the Roberts Supreme Court has upheld consistently, it is the power of corporations and their status above individuals. While I strongly disagree with the idea philosophically, I see an opportunity to use this concept towards regulation of guns, along with the concept enshrined in the Court's ruling regarding the Affordable Care Act. Simply put, I suggest that all guns be insured against the damage that they can potentially wreak. Let me clarify that the insurance is on the gun, not the gun owner. The key reason is that the gun must be insured from the moment it rolls off an assembly line (if locally made) or the instant it enters a US entry port. The moment the weapon is sold to a gun dealer, the onus for maintaining insurance can be transferred to the dealer or retained by the original party - I do not forsee many companies choosing that option, even less their insurance companies. Similarly the dealer is free to transfer ownership of the insurance policy along with ownership of the gun to his buyer, or he may choose to trust his buyers will never use their guns on other people without good and unimpeachable cause. The same rule holds for any sale of the gun, with no exceptions.

Some advantages of this are immediately obvious. Libertarians who fear the reach of the government and its intrusion into their private lives have fewer qualms over the same power in the hands of private companies and corporations. The level of regulation required over the sales will now be determined not in Washington but in the opaque boardrooms of Omaha and Charlotte and Wilmington. The greatest fear of Constitutionalists, that their right to bear arms enshrined in their reading of the Second Amendment, will be set at rest, since the law does not prevent anyone, not even Son of Sam, from buying a gun, so long as he or she can pay the insurance rates on it.  In my mind, the actual intent of the Second Amendment can be further strengthened by offering waivers or reduced insurance needs for militias that can meet the definition of "well-regulated"; in essence, weapons for the police or National Guard would not need to be insured to the same level as those in the hands of the Hutaree. 

However, in fairness to Branch Davidians and their ilk, the insurance amount on guns will be predicated only on the gun itself, not the owner. There is a challenge in determining the correct amount of insurance required, especially when the aim is to keep the amount within reason that can be serviced by private insurance companies. My starting thought for this would be the potential destructive power of the weapon. Obviously a small handgun, a shotgun or a hunting rifle have limited use in mass killings and would carry a smaller coverage than the now infamous AR-15 Bushmaster. Determining a good coverage amount is a job for actuaries (maybe?) and underwriters, and I have no doubt that they will crunch through the numbers and figure out a formula that combines population, per capita gun ownership, annual gun homicide rates, lost earning due to premature death and tooth fairy taxes. This amount would then be applied to every privately owned gun in the US, and to every gun being manufactured, offered for sale or being imported. In the event that a weapon is used in any crime, the insurance would be shared amongst the victims and/or their next of kin. One advantage, one that would really bring lawyers over to support this, is that even accident victims like Dick Cheney's unfortunate hunting partner would stand to gain when mistaken for a quail and shot in the face.

I appeal to the free market supporters on this idea. The insurance companies can evaluate the risk of say a large gun dealership, look at their safety methods and attention to inventor keeping and set a very low rate or a high rate that reflects the risk that a weapon will be sold improperly. This provides an incentive to the dealer to follow better practices and sell only to those customers who can take over the weapon liability. In turn, when seeking to buy a gun, an individual would have to convince his insurance company that he is not a risk. He may be required to provide mental health certification, and private insurers may ask for periodical certificates - it's important to emphasize that these checks would be between the individual and his insurance company only. If an insurer wishes to ban its customers from carrying their guns out of their houses, that too would be between the two private entities, and the government's role would start and end with requiring that the gun be insured at all times. As I said before, if a dealer trusts his strawbuyer client, he may retain ownership of the insurance, but he would face claims if any of those weapons was used in a crime subsequently - his insurance company may require a much higher premium for the risk involved or may refuse him permission to sell without transferring liability. On the flip side, the insurance company may very well offer big discounts for a dealer that has a waiting period on purchases, or performs detailed background checks, or one that ensures the buyer has insurance before handing over a weapon. (In part the need for waiting periods and background checks are based on the idea that dealers, similar to car dealerships, may offer a 30 day insurance period to the buyer).

In much the same vein, the individual may obtain discounts on their insurance by showing that they keep their guns securely. I envision insurance rates for existing gun owners being very low if they can show a long and responsible history of ownership - in other words for most gun owners. I also imagine most hunting weapons and smaller caliber pistols being either waived or covered for very low rates, given that they can be used in homicides (see the latest high profile case from Arizona and the on-going hostage standoff in Alabama), but they cause comparatively less death and destruction. I also foresee insurance companies offering reducing rates (similar to auto insurance models) based on history and discounts for people who can demonstrate safe practices and attendance of gun safety classes, again similar to auto insurance discounts for defensive driving classes and the like.

No proposal would be universally hailed, and gun owners would likely grumble at any rule that increases their bills for owning weapons. But given that this neither constrains one's rights under the Second Amendment, nor increases the role of government in our lives, I see it as the simplest means to reducing gun violence. It would have a very small impact on the vast majority of gun owners, but it would go a long way to reducing the vast number of guns available to criminals. I will, I admit, increase the cost of owning a gun, but that may be a small price to pay for reducing the overall level of gun violence.

A Call From Arms

In the month since the Newtown, CT massacre, emotions have surged and ebbed, and as is my practice in such emotionally charged issues, I've waited a while before addressing it in my blog. While it appeared, in the first days after the killings, that the sheer horror of seeing a score of elementary school kids cut down in their schoolrooms would lead to a raft of overdue regulations to take some of the tools of mass execution out of the hands of would-be killers, with each passing day the chances of any meaningful legislation reduce rapidly. In a world of the twenty four news cycle,  even a tragedy of this magnitude cannot long hold our attention, especially when the national news is devoted to the never ending manufactured drama of the national debt and budget deficit, and predictably the first excitement has faded and with it the burst of energy to take on the entrenched interests of the gun industry has rapidly dissipated.

No discussion on gun control is complete without a mention of the National Rifle Association, which has only just reached five million members. That's not a small number, of course, but it represents only about a tenth of the total number of gun owners in the country. On the other hand their political power is far beyond their membership numbers suggest, all the more amazing when one considers that they don't seem to represent the interests of gun owners so much as those of gun manufacturers and sellers. Yet the legislature is largely beholden to them, and every presidential candidate has to profess his love for guns and his commitment to the right to own. The NRA and other gun rights groups have chipped away at controls and regulations, even used the courts to overturn laws they oppose, in the name of freedom and the rights of the Second Amendment. Members, and gun owning non-members have followed along, reading docilely from the script they've been handed and apparently driven by an irrational fear instilled in them by their handlers, and rarely stopping to actually question the actual dangers to their way of life.

The most amazing thing is that NRA seems to have abandoned their gun-owning individual members a long time ago, and now seem only to care about the rights, and profits, of the gun manufacturers and sellers. There is no other explanation for their opposition to background checks, their opposition to tracking gun sellers' inventories, their support for destruction of the records within twenty four hours and above all, their opposition to any restrictions on who can buy guns. Ironically, they always cloak their motives as protection of the rights of law abiding citizens. Yet all these policies they endorse have nothing to do with law abiding citizens and everything to do with selling guns at all  costs, to anyone and everyone. The NRA's favorite argument in favor of guns for law-abiding citizens' access to weapons is to protect themselves from criminals, who will have guns anyhow; an amazingly prescient argument, since the NRA does their best to ensure that those criminals will be able to buy guns whenever they want. It's a logic that benefits only those providing guns. As an interesting comparison, in many even most states, convicted (and even suspected to be convicted) felons lose their right to vote (and those convicted of sexual crimes, even be it urinating in public, can lose all rights to privacy), but they retain their right, or at least their ability to buy guns, in world of "don't ask, don't tell" between buyer and seller.

I concede that if the most radical of gun control proponents had their way, there would be a lot of guns to collect and destroy. On the other hand, almost no one believes that such a sea change is practical, or even necessary; and even fervent believers in gun control such as I know that anything so radical would be tantamount to plunging the nation into chaos and bloodshed, hardly the end result desired. We may not believe in the need for any normal individual to own a gun, or ten, but we see the answer in education, not confiscations. Unfortunately, the most influential voices on the gun rights lobby refuse to accept that reality and either truly believe or cynically profess to believe that their rights to own guns are threatened, and their followers appear to buy into it rather wholeheartedly.

Most control proponents disagree with gun rights believers over the reading of the Second Amendment - indeed, millions of pages have been devoted to the correct interpretation of that one little sentence - but let us leave that argument for another time and grant a universal right to own firearms. Why is it then so impossible to find some common ground, based on common sense? No one, surely, wishes to see more deaths by guns (I would hope) and surely the basic interests of gun owners can be met while still ensuring civic safety in a practical manner; I emphasize practical, since there are some suggestions that the way to safety in schools is either bullet proof vests for the children (talk about a Dystopian scenario) or armed faculty or guards. The single biggest regulation required would cover high capacity gun magazines - does this in fact infringe on the normal gun owner? Would a lack of assault weapons - high rate of fire, high capacity magazines - really affect the vast majority of gun owners, or any legal owners in their professed needs?

To the best of my knowledge there are three main reasons that people own guns, viz. personal defense, hunting and protection against a tyrannical government. In the case of protection, whether in one's home or even for those partisans who claim a right to carry their guns at all times (again a topic that is best left for another time), the most effective weapons are pistols and shotguns. One rarely sees cases of home invasions or muggings deterred by individual with M-16 rifles; even in such cases as homeowners do defend their castles with assault rifles, it seems more like an overkill than a necessity, with the exception, of course, of those trapped in Precinct 13 on that fateful night. My intellectual twin, who couldn't agree less with me on almost any topic under the sun, is possibly the only hunter I know who claims to need an assault rifle to hunt hogs, but most other hunters seem to prefer weapons that are better at killing animals than human beings, or in other words, hunting rifles or shotguns; and I'm almost certain that Dick Cheney's hunting partners, like Harry Whittington, are strongly opposed to hunting with assault rifles.

Which brings us to the last reason for owning weapons. the one often touted by those on the far edges of the political spectrum: citizens need their guns to protect themselves from the tyranny of the government. This latest idea has been trotted out on Fox TV recently, suggesting that it is the new normal on the rightwing, but few of those advocating this position seem to really think through the argument. Let us set aside for a moment the very great differences between the times in which the Constitution was framed and the world we live in today - the men who wrote that document lived in a world of muskets, not automatic rifles. Perhaps even more importantly, the framers envisioned a citizen militia for national defense, and did not support the invention of a permanent professional army - again, an idea that was reasonable in the days it was written, but long since overtaken by a changing world. But let us set aside these lacunae, and focus only on the practical aspects of opposing the potential tyranny of the government in today's world. Let us even entertain, for academic purposes, the suspicion of the government, so rampant amongst owners of assault rifles and like weapons. Let us pretend that the government is in fact out to usurp our liberties and that we need to fight back against tyranny, even though I see no credible evidence of this happening in the way envisioned by these partisans. The fact is that weapons alone, even the powerful semi-automatic rifles available to everyone today, are far less important in withstanding State repression than their owners believe. Not only is the State (any functioning country really) possessed of far greater firepower than its civilians could muster - especially when the State in this case commands the might of the US military - but their advantages over would-be resistance fighters really lies in their command and control systems, their organization and dedicated communication networks, and their control over the wider communication systems. This is what has helped the Assad regime retain power in Syria, and that regime's gradual loss of control over those levers of power to their opponents is leading to their demise. It is why governments from Iran to Egypt have countered popular protests with a shut down of the internet and other public communications, and their successes in those endeavors have determined the success or failure of the protests against them.

Freedom must be protected, even in the freest of societies, but it is not defended with guns or swords. Those who think that they can take on the government with their personal weapons are fooling themselves - of course, most of those who seek to defend themselves against their government in the United States are living in an illusory world already. They suspect their government of sinister motives where none exist, and close their eyes to the actual constraints upon their freedom. These patriots fear the jack-booted minions of the government, seeking to tear their guns from them, when the real weapon of freedom is information. The power to know the truth of the workings of our government is the real shield against government tyranny, the ability to mobilize public opinion, share ideas and information is our real defense against a government's attempt to usurp our rights. Guns, especially in the hands of a disorganized mob, are of no avail and would do more harm than good, while a free press and open channels of communication are what keep our government servants, not masters of the citizenry.

Governments, especially tyrannical ones but even democratic ones, may like to keep their population's access to weapons limited, but they do not fear their armed citizens; they only fear informed and questioning citizenry. It is no coincidence that governments, everywhere, seek to draw a curtain over their actions and keep their secrets from the people they purport to serve. Guns do not compel transparency in governments, but ceaseless vigilance by citizens and the Fourth Estate does. A study of access to weapons in the populations of different nations showed no great co-relation between weapons and freedom. The USA leads the world in gun ownership, and staunchly democratic and liberal nations like Switzerland rank up there with it; however so do nations like Iraq, even under Saddam Hussein, Afghanistan and Somalia, which leave a lot to be desired by way of liberty. Nations like Japan enjoy the same level of freedom without a high percentage of armed citizens. Perhaps most telling in the argument regarding the importance of guns to liberty are the cases of Libya, Egypt and Tunisia - nations that have risen against dictators. Libya had plenty of weapons in the hands of its people, yet the forces of the state rapidly crushed the local militias and were stopped only by the more powerful air forces of Europe and the US. By contrast, Tunisia, and to a lesser extent Egypt had very low numbers of armed citizens, but overthrew their dictatorial governments through largely peaceful mobilization of huge swaths of the the population. Guns played next to no role in overthrowing the tyrants, while information and communication was king.

In conclusion, I may say that I see no overwhelming need for citizens to own the kind of assault weapons that so many gun proponents demand as a right. I'll concede that they may have a Constitutional right to weapons even (though I have never bought into that narrow reading of the Second Amendment) but if they see their weapons as protecting their freedom, they delude themselves. There has been no attempt to reduce the proliferation of guns in decades, while numerous rules have greatly expanded access to powerful weapons. The continued paranoia about government tyranny in the face of all facts would be merely pathetic, except that it has also placed this country far ahead of the rest of the world in every category of gun related violence and death. Guns may be cool to shoot, and I cannot help but wonder if in the case of military-style assault weapons, they also help the owners compensate for other shortcomings and feelings of inadequacy. But given the number of avoidable deaths, is the price too high?