Machine gun fire into Las Vegas crowd at Route 91 music Festival

[pnewton]

I will add one more in here that no one will like. I would like it if guns were non-transferrable, like prescription medicine. If you must have a gun that you buy, you would have to understand that it could not be re-sold or traded. The secondary gun market needs to end. It is the path to proliferation. One can sell a gun to someone who is reasonably trust worthy, who might also do the same to someone still okay, and so on until it reached the hands of someone who will sell it to anybody with the cash.

That would mean, just like those with federal firearms license, if you bought five guns, and the ATF has reason to be suspicious, you have to produce those guns you purchased.

 

[dvdjs]

Interesting case study in FAKE NEWS.
Some points of fakery have wound up on this thread.

After Las Vegas Shooting, Fake News Regains Its Megaphone

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/business/las-vegas-shooting-fake-news.html

 

[exnihilo]

I don’t know about your jurisdiction, but where I live my insurance covers me even if the guy in the other car wasn’t insured. So there’s considerable value to car insurance. I actually once got hit by someone driving an uninsured car and without a valid drivers license (both against the law where I live), and my insurance covered the damage for my vehicle. I presume my insurance company then went after the person who hit me.

You insurance company doesn’t cover you for uninsured out of they goodness of their heart. They charge you for it. Insurance is highly regulated. So the state makes a law making you have insurance. And knowing how useless it is they make you also have insurance to account for all the people who ignore the law. It’s a joke.

 

[exnihilo]

Actually they don’t. The enormous cost of this act will be placed on the taxpayers and those close to or the actual individuals that were murdered or wounded. If the shooter had been required to carry insurance on the weapons he had, it would have covered these costs.

No, they do. Individuals, including the state, can sue this man. In this case they can sue his estate. They won’t get much if anything. What insurance is going to cover the cost of something like this? Aain, if this is important why not make everyone, not just gun owners, carry billion dollar umbrella policies to account for whatever they might do. There are a lot more car accidents where the responsible party doesn’t have enough to pay for all the damages than there are shootings.

 

[Jig_Saw]

No, they do. Individuals, including the state, can sue this man. In this case they can sue his estate. They won’t get much if anything. What insurance is going to cover the cost of something like this? Aain, if this is important why not make everyone, not just gun owners, carry billion dollar umbrella policies to account for whatever they might do. There are a lot more car accidents where the responsible party doesn’t have enough to pay for all the damages than there are shootings.

“They won’t get much of anything” - Exactly. The individual nor his estate will carry the cost of his act. That’s why insurance is necessary. I can’t think of any reason why insurance companies wouldn’t cover it. They would access the risk and then split it up among according to risk. I’m sure discounts will come in for gunowners who do the right things like get proper and regular training and store their weapons properly.

It’s interesting that you bring up car insurance because, of course, most (all?) states require car insurance to pay for accidents.

 

[exnihilo]

So why not require universal billion dollar umbrella policies? That way all risk is covered not just gun owner. As I said car drivers are more likely to exceed their ability to cover loses than gun owners.

 

[Jig_Saw]

So why not require universal billion dollar umbrella policies? That way all risk is covered not just gun owner. As I said car drivers are more likely to exceed their ability to cover loses than gun owners.

The risk should be according to the possibility of causing that much damage. People that own a certain type of weapon that can murder tens of citizens at once are most likely to need a very high limit ($500M), but I think most gun owners would only require a relatively low limit policy ($1M or so).

 

[Ridgerunner]

As I said, the gun lobby contributes more than that per year, not that it matters since they are not comparable fields, and we have stipulated a more limited charge of being “masters.”

The NRA is composed of its members. Whatever lobbying money NRA has comes from the members. It’s not some creature all its own. And the likelihood is that for every actual NRA member, there are others who are in sympathy with it. So, really, the “opponent” of those who want greater restrictions on guns is a segment of the population.

 

[Ridgerunner]

The risk should be according to the possibility of causing that much damage. People that own a certain type of weapon that can murder tens of citizens at once are most likely to need a very high limit ($500M), but I think most gun owners would only require a relatively low limit policy ($1M or so).

You can kill a lot more people with ammonium nitrate than you can with almost any gun you can imagine. And it appears Paddock was preparing for other massacres, including with ammonium nitrate. He had some in his possession and no visible other need for it. So what about that? What do we do about ammonium nitrate?

 

[Jig_Saw]

You can kill a lot more people with ammonium nitrate than you can with almost any gun you can imagine. And it appears Paddock was preparing for other massacres, including with ammonium nitrate. He had some in his possession and no visible other need for it. So what about that? What do we do about ammonium nitrate?

If people were getting mass murdered by ammonium nitrate on a regular basis, we would do something about it. If I recall correctly, after Oklahoma City, there was talk about adding some substance into the ammonium nitrate that can prevent it becoming an explosive. If another Oklahoma City had happened, you can bet there would be heavy regulations placed on ammonium nitrate or this substance would have to be added.

The bigger question to me is why everyone is attempting to deflect this conversation away from gun owners taking financial responsibility for their weapons.

 

[exnihilo]

You keep ignoring my point about universal liability insurance. The cheapest auto liability policies will not cover the potential liability one can face from driving a car. That is just cars. There are lots of other ways a person can be liable for serious injury or death. So what about universal liability requirements?

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LeafByNiggle:

As I said, the gun lobby contributes more than that per year, not that it matters since they are not comparable fields, and we have stipulated a more limited charge of being “masters.”

The NRA is composed of its members. Whatever lobbying money NRA has comes from the members. It’s not some creature all its own. And the likelihood is that for every actual NRA member, there are others who are in sympathy with it. So, really, the “opponent” of those who want greater restrictions on guns is a segment of the population.

I think that is quite a naive view of NRA funding. The gun industry, not the individual members, provides the bulk of the funding.

 

[Jig_Saw]

You keep ignoring my point about universal liability insurance. The cheapest auto liability policies will not cover the potential liability one can face from driving a car. That is just cars. There are lots of other ways a person can be liable for serious injury or death. So what about universal liability requirements?

The state sets the limits on liability policies for automobiles and I agree that some do not meet reasonable standards. I talked to my agent recently and we agreed to up the policies to a higher limit as she said she was seeing cases where my policy wasn’t covering the total cost of the accident.

As far as universal liability policy, that could be necessary at some point is there isn’t a clear indicator of potential risk. For example, someone that doesn’t own a car does not require car insurance. Someone that doesn’t own a weapon that can murders dozens of people doesn’t need insurance to cover that possibility. This is about those owning weapons taking financial responsibility and not passing those costs onto the taxpayers.

 

[Ridgerunner]

If people were getting mass murdered by ammonium nitrate on a regular basis, we would do something about it. If I recall correctly, after Oklahoma City, there was talk about adding some substance into the ammonium nitrate that can prevent it becoming an explosive. If another Oklahoma City had happened, you can bet there would be heavy regulations placed on ammonium nitrate or this substance would have to be added.

I don’t know what that substance could be. Perhaps you could tell us. It’s hard for me to imagine any substance that can make ammonium nitrate reliably stable regardless of what other additives might be put into it.

And frankly, if ammonium nitrate becomes heavily regulated, be ready to pay a lot more for the food you eat.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I really do wonder about insuring against one’s own intentional acts. A lot of policies exclude coverage for that kind of thing.

 

[niceatheist]

niceatheist:

I don’t know about your jurisdiction, but where I live my insurance covers me even if the guy in the other car wasn’t insured. So there’s considerable value to car insurance. I actually once got hit by someone driving an uninsured car and without a valid drivers license (both against the law where I live), and my insurance covered the damage for my vehicle. I presume my insurance company then went after the person who hit me.

You insurance company doesn’t cover you for uninsured out of they goodness of their heart. They charge you for it. Insurance is highly regulated. So the state makes a law making you have insurance. And knowing how useless it is they make you also have insurance to account for all the people who ignore the law. It’s a joke.

Except of course that the damage to my vehicle, which greatly exceeded the insurance I paid that year, was covered. If I had no insurance, then out would be out the entire loss.

 

[Jig_Saw]

I don’t know what that substance could be. Perhaps you could tell us. It’s hard for me to imagine any substance that can make ammonium nitrate reliably stable regardless of what other additives might be put into it.

And frankly, if ammonium nitrate becomes heavily regulated, be ready to pay a lot more for the food you eat.

I guess there are many ways to suppress the explosive power of ammonium nitrate. A quick research suggests that this can be called a desensitizer. I found a 1988 patent (USP 4701227) and a paper on using coal ash (http://www.flyash.info/2009/078-taulbee2009.pdf). I have no idea what the best or most cost effective way to do this is, but it most certainly exists.

 

[Jig_Saw]

I really do wonder about insuring against one’s own intentional acts. A lot of policies exclude coverage for that kind of thing.

There would have to be insurance that covers it so that the cost of gun owner’s exercising their rights does not take away the rights of the other citizens to their property and their lives.

 

[exnihilo]

As far as universal liability policy, that could be necessary at some point is there isn’t a clear indicator of potential risk. For example, someone that doesn’t own a car does not require car insurance. Someone that doesn’t own a weapon that can murders dozens of people doesn’t need insurance to cover that possibility. This is about those owning weapons taking financial responsibility and not passing those costs onto the taxpayers.

There is no clear risk from mere gun owners. There is no more risk than from owners of frying pans. Just today I saw a story about a woman who killed a man with a frying pan. So we should, under your reasoning, all have liability insurance to cover any damage we could possibly cause.

 

[pnewton]

There is no clear risk from mere gun owners. There is no more risk than from owners of frying pans.

I do not think this argument has ever changed anyone’s mind. “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” “Anything can be a deadly weapon.” If flies in the face of logic to say that because we cannot eliminate risk we should not try and reduce it. This man equipped with 24 frying pans could still have been stopped by one person.

I am not saying that eliminating guns is the answer. That is equally absurd. But at some point we must consider ways to limit gun availability to every human being, especially the most deadly of guns.