Gun Incident Tax
- by: JO Sevenfivxre
- recipient: The President
Guns are essentially 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.
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I've been trying to promote this in various forums and emailing freinds and concerned parties; the Sandy Hook Promise parents, for example.
It's not working.
One of the themes I'm seeing is the perception that it's unrealistic. Someone in the Daily Kos said 'pie in the sky'. Its as if people have an overall view that things can't be too close to perfect in this world; that everything needs to be a compromise, or some minor improvement of the existing mess in order to work.
Since I came up with the idea in 2012, nobody has found a lojikal fault with it, only details that would need to be worked out if it were implimented. Obviously, gun proponents try to dismiss the idea as stupid, naive, unconstitutional, etc., but they never come up with any objections of substance.
In reality, not the 'reality' that's been created by the gun lobbyists, the gun control laws that are being argued over will have little or no effect on the rate of deaths, injuries and property damage. They are all sensible, but they are also missing the target. Not that the NRA won't fight them tooth & nail and likely defeat them!
Proliferation is the real problem.
The GIT, along with a generous buy back program WILL reduce proliferation. GIT will reverse the trend to increase the presence of guns in our society and motivate gun proponents to favor laws that reduce their usage and the buy back program will bring the number of existing guns down, at least to a manageable level.
If you've already signed, get everybody you know to sign also. Get the word out any way you can.
Dear President Obama,
Guns are essentially 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.
Please do what you can with this. I know the republicans will block anything you want to do, so maybe some sort of executive order can be formulated out of this idea.
Thanks for taking the time to consider this.
Thanks.
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