If some rogues don't get car insurance, is that going to be your reason not to get it? Perhaps there should be really stiff penalties for those found with guns but no insurance. After all, there's going to be so much prison vacancy after cannabis is delisted as a Schedule I drug. It's worth considering.
You might have something there. If we threw everyone in jail that had a gun without insurance, we'd more than likely get just about every black in America off the street. Thanks for the suggestion.
If we were to dissect the number of gun crimes committed in Chicago over the past 5 years, I'd virtually guarantee that the majority were "unregistered"...Hence, this overwhelming urge to find a solution to a non-existent problem and pretend that "progress" is being made... I can already hear the screams of racism for locking up perps who have uninsured guns as if it's some sort of race issue...Honestly, start an honest conversation about all of the guns crimes to unregistered guns and then I'll take some of this stuff seriously.
One possible solution is the same that we do for older cars that can't pass the emissions test. They are grandfathered in. What do you do if Roe vs Wade was overturned? Put all those women in jail that had abortions when the law was otherwise? It very difficult to come up with a solution to make legislation for owners of guns currently. It is nearly impossible to fix things retroactively in just about any situation. That said, you could try to pass law that all gun owners have to have insurance before they buy a gun, and even ones that are bought guns before the law is passed. Now, you go to buy a gun, no can do if no insurance. You go to a shooting range, and you have to show proof of insurance to shoot a gun. You get caught using a gun without insurance, it is a Federal Crime. The only guns that get through and this suggested law doesn't solve are the ones that own guns before the law is passed, and just use them for crime. They aren't going to walk into State Farm and try to get insurance because many of them have criminal records. There is no solution to that anyway going backward. But it will solve the problem going forward, over time.
The problem is hardly non-existent, and the solution, whatever it may be, has to start somewhere. I'm not saying this is necessarily it, but it's worth looking into. I think insurance companies would do serious due diligence, which is a good step in the right direction. Crazy stiff penalties for absence of insurance, especially if the gun is also unregistered, would be the second step of a potentially interesting solution. Those opposed to considering and exploring alternatives are tacitly condoning more of the same.
Again, the vast majority (conservatively 90%) of all gun related crime in Chicago would not be fixed by this amended law. When you can create a solution to all of the underground gun dealing then some progress can be made, but that is probably not possible.
You aren't getting the jist of my argument. What I am saying is that the registered gun owners aren't the ones going out into the streets of Chicago and gunning people down. You are probably not familiar with just how much gun violence takes place every single day in the city of Chicago. It is literally off the charts. As I mentioned earlier, these crimes take place with unregistered, stolen guns and hence they are basically untraceable back to any chain of ownership. Hence, these propositions are nothing more than political grandstanding and do nothing to curb all of the gun violence in major cities where the vast majority of gun violence is between rival gangs over territorial battle lines. It would help if everybody involved in these sorts of arguments dealt with the FACTS of the matter and less with the outlier cases that seem to shape the scope of most of these arguments.
As I said in the insurance for guns law post, which you may or may not have read carefully, it goes a great way towards solving the problem going forward, slowly. I don't have a solution for the problem as it exists now and AFAIK, no one does. Perhaps you know how to solve it now? We are all ears.
What do you propose to fix the problem now? You must at least acknowledge that over time, the insurance to own a gun law will reduce the number of guns in the hands of criminals. The insurance to own a gun law may have to be tweaked to make it work as intended, but this feels like a step in the the right direction to slowly fix many problems over time.
I do have one solution, but no one has the political will to make it happen...It strikes right to the source of the violence...criminal gangs...how did we take down the mafia? Now, let's apply that sort of ambition to the street gangs...Again, like I said, a few soundbites about this topic have made the news over the years, but little action is made on that front...I suppose there is alot of "hot money" flowing thru the economy that makes this inconvenient for a whole host of reasons.