Guns are actually just a hobby for the average citizen. They are certainly not an essential part of living in the society we have built, like cars or money, so should not receive the same level of universal support. Yet that is exactly what's happening now - everybody pays some of the cost of this hobby whether they want to or not.
My solution is what I've called the Gun Incident Tax (GIT). It is alot like insurance in that the cost of incidents caused by guns are spread over all the willing participants. Somebody gets shot, runs up 500,000 in medical bills and everybody who owns a gun and all the lobbying organizations' monthly bill goes up a little. Somebody gets killed, whether accidentally, suicide, murder, self defense etc., and a set amount, say 5,000,000 is charged by the GIT system.
I know this sounds radical, but it is perfectly logical. Those who want to own guns andor promote them should be willing to pay the total cost rather than freeloading on the rest of us.
It doesn't matter if someone is in rural Colorado and never even fired their gun, their purchase of it helped enable the purchase of every bullet that killed or injured someone or just broke a window, simply by making the manufacture a financially viable proposition. Why should you and I have to help pay for them?
The way it would work for victims is that they would be fully compensated for all expenses including at least 100 dollars per hour for every minute the incident cost them. Families of the dead victims would get 5 million on top of that.
The way it is now, if you get out to your car on your way to work in the morning and find a bullet hole in your windshield, you are probably screwed. Good luck finding the perp. With the GIT system in place, you would not have to find out who did it. Just file a police report and the gun owners of America will cover the cost they helped generate.
The way it is now, the gun community has no direct motive to do anything about the trouble caused by thier hobby. The lobbying organizations are in fact aided by all the violence! The more incidents there are, the more threatened people feel and thus think they need to buy a gun.
The GIT will provide serious motivation to consider the real world effects of existing and proposed gun laws. The idea that 'this law will lower my GIT bill' will dominate their thinking.
I expect the NRA, ALEC and their pet congressmen will object strongly to this. So, to sweeten the deal for them (really, to expose the lie that guns supress crime) the GIT system will pay a bonus whenever a gun saves a life, stops a crime, recovers stolen property etc.
Exposing the freeloader aspect of the hobbyists will at least put the entire debate in a new lite. Nobody likes to be called a freeloader especially the supposedly self sufficient libertarian minded 'conservatives' who are usually gun proponents.
10:58 PM PT: Here's a Care2 petition I have going for this: Gun Incident Tax
Mon Oct 12, 2015 at 4:50 PM PT: A similar idea is now the law in Seattle.
http://www.seattle.gov/...
The NRA has filed a suit.
Wed Oct 28, 2015 at 5:18 AM PT: Started a petition at MoveOn.
http://petitions.moveon.org/...