Gun taxes would pay for the public health problem they cause.
“…taxing ME to pay for the acts of criminals makes no sense.”
A tax like that would work like an insurance premium. If someone steals your gun and hurts themselves or others with it, you’re covered. If you shoot yourself with the gun, you’re covered. If some child finds the gun on your night stand and shoots themselves or another child, you’re covered. If you shoot at an intruder and the bullet hits your neighbor, you’re covered.
The car/gun ownership canard is dead
That’s not what “canard” means. Cars are deadly, guns are deadly. The analogy is apt. My main point is that regulation doesn’t stifle car ownership and won’t stifle gun ownership. And cars have a use in the modern world.
Most schemes have already been tried and failed.
Most schemes have been extremely successful. The US is the only country in the world that has a gun fetish. Modern countries have modern gun laws and we need to join the modern world in that respect (and so many other respects).
criminals won’t give a damn and/or be affected by any new law.
Criminals don’t pluck guns out of thin air. They must buy them somewhere. Usually they get them through straw purchasers. If each and every gun must have a title of ownership, a stiff sales tax, and a registration requirement, that will make criminals’ jobs harder. If guns have strict storage and transport regulations, then that means they will be much harder to steal. The regulations I’m proposing will cool the jets of criminals. How can that be a bad thing? Why wouldn’t you want to be able to easily prove a particular gun belongs to you?
Your suggestions are great for helping people in crisis and with mental health issues. Right now the mental health treatment in our country consists of waiting around for them to commit a crime and then sending them to prison. Prisons are our biggest mental health facilities.
But mentally ill people are far more likely to be the targets of violence and not the perpetrators. Effective mental health treatment would be wonderful but won’t take care of the gun problem. As far as guns go, mental health treatment is about as close to doing nothing as you can get and still do something. It is one tenth of one percent better than thoughts and prayers.
Right now the public health aspect is entirely ignored by the pro-gun lobby. That issue is what I care about the most.
suicidal people still manage to kill themselves if a gun isn’t available
Without a gun suicides are far less successful. The Israeli army had a bad suicide problem for a while and they solved it by not allowing soldiers to take their weapons home with them. Suicide rates plummeted.
