'Mass shooting' reported at Sutherland Springs church in Texas

[Cyber Liberty]

I found this Huffpo article while looking to find any cases where confiscation did not follow registration.  Check out what this author (Tom Harvey), who desperately wants registration and confiscation if he deems it necessary, says about insurance (emphasis mine):

If firearm registration remains politically infeasible, there is another way to accomplish most of these goals. That is to have insurance, starting at manufacture and requiring continuance of insurer responsibility through all transfers unless replaced by new insurance. Readers who know my writing know I spend most of my time advocating such insurance in the face of massive resistance from both the gun and the insurance industry.

This is why I refuse to believe people who assure me their desire to register and insure guns are benign.  They know exactly what they are proposing.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-harvey/gun-registration_b_5186200.html

[Smokin Joe]

The need to be responsible is inherent in the ownership of a deadly implement that has the capacity to harm others.  Insurance can be priced to be less expensive for responsible gun owners than for irresponsible ones.   

In technical jargon, the dilemma with gun (or automobile) ownership is that each involves "externalities" -  the risk that the gun, or car, will be used to harm others.   In the absence of insurance, folks fail to consider the broader social costs of choices like buying a gun or car.   An insurance requirement is a practical and fair means for making potential owners of guns, or cars, take into account these potential social costs,  and (by skillful underwriting) encourage responsible behavior by reducing premiums for such behavior.

I not only have vehicles and firearms, I have tools. Used properly, these can fell trees, cut timbers or firewood, build a house, plumb it, wire it, etc.

Used improperly, those same tools I use to prepare dinner could be used to kill and dismember a person. Now, I have no desire nor intent to ever use my good chef's knife for something like that, nor any of the other tools I own, but that danger sure exists in the wrong hands. Carrying this ridiculous nonsense to its inevitable conclusion, any point object over 3 inches (the usual cutoff for a knife to be considered a "deadly weapon"), any edged device, any power tool (whether electric or gasoline power), any long handled garden implement (and some short handled ones) scissors, pencils, pens, sticks, bricks and rocks, wood chippers, compressed gasses, flammable liquids are all potentially deadly devices, and we haven't even gotten into elongated fibers and woven products like yarn, scarves, and neckties which could be utilized as ligatures, power cords, ropes, twine, and strapping tape, and then there are those evil buckets and plastic bags and zip ties (industrial sized). Well, shit, the list is endless.

Do we have to have separate insurance policies for all that stuff? Every one of those things could be and likely has been used as a murder weapon by someone.   And then, to get back to basics, there are always sticks...especially the pointy ones, or ones stout enough to use as a club. Not to mention "blunt instruments, including hands and feet" which have been used in large numbers to kill people every year.

Cain smote Abel with a rock, the first documented murder weapon. Being a geologist, I have an assortment of nice rocks I brought in from the wild, tamed, and taught not to jump on people's heads and such, but will I get a discount because I am a professional or will I have to pay full rate for having rocks around?

Life is dangerous. No one gets out alive.  Handle it. 

[Jazzhead]

I not only have vehicles and firearms, I have tools. Used properly, these can fell trees, cut timbers or firewood, build a house, plumb it, wire it, etc.

Used improperly, those same tools I use to prepare dinner could be used to kill and dismember a person. Now, I have no desire nor intent to ever use my good chef's knife for something like that, nor any of the other tools I own, but that danger sure exists in the wrong hands. Carrying this ridiculous nonsense to its inevitable conclusion, any point object over 3 inches (the usual cutoff for a knife to be considered a "deadly weapon"), any edged device, any power tool (whether electric or gasoline power), any long handled garden implement (and some short handled ones) scissors, pencils, pens, sticks, bricks and rocks, wood chippers, compressed gasses, flammable liquids are all potentially deadly devices, and we haven't even gotten into elongated fibers and woven products like yarn, scarves, and neckties which could be utilized as ligatures, power cords, ropes, twine, and strapping tape, and then there are those evil buckets and plastic bags and zip ties (industrial sized). Well, shit, the list is endless.

Do we have to have separate insurance policies for all that stuff? Every one of those things could be and likely has been used as a murder weapon by someone.   And then, to get back to basics, there are always sticks...especially the pointy ones, or ones stout enough to use as a club. Not to mention "blunt instruments, including hands and feet" which have been used in large numbers to kill people every year.

Cain smote Abel with a rock, the first documented murder weapon. Being a geologist, I have an assortment of nice rocks I brought in from the wild, tamed, and taught not to jump on people's heads and such, but will I get a discount because I am a professional or will I have to pay full rate for having rocks around?

Life is dangerous. No one gets out alive.  Handle it.

You miss the point.   Cars and guns are inherently, and chronically, dangerous, and the their use causes thousands of deaths and untold injuries each year.   A person shot in the spine, for example, may be disabled and need care for the rest of his life.   You have every right to own a gun, just as you have every right to own a car.   But you do not have the right to expose others to deadly risks without compensation.

Register and insure your cars.  Register and insure your guns. 

[Smokin Joe]

I found this Huffpo article while looking to find any cases where confiscation did not follow registration.  Check out what this author (Tom Harvey), who desperately wants registration and confiscation if he deems it necessary, says about insurance (emphasis mine):

This is why I refuse to believe people who assure me their desire to register and insure guns are benign.  They know exactly what they are proposing.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-harvey/gun-registration_b_5186200.html

Harvey is a dumbass.

I grew up in Maryland, in the days when a guy could put a check in the envelope with an order form and the postman would deliver his gun. Still a lover of firearms, I am confronted by the fact that half of my gun cabinet is verboten in the state I grew up in. That's right, it'd be a crime to lock them in a steel chest in the back of my van and drive across the bridge from Virginia with those rifles, handguns, and a stack of tin boxes which can hold ammo, even if I didn't have a sing le cartridge in the vehicle. In fact, there would be so many Felony counts in that chest that they would let out every murderer in the state long before my sentence would expire.

For that reason, I seldom set foot there. I can't send my Dad a rifle I know he'd love to try out, even through a dealer, because it is illegal to own there and because some bedwetter has a fit if they try to think of a number bigger than '10'. That in a State where the mayor of a major City let looters have room to work it out, loot and burn.
As for Tom Harvey, Feel safe, fool. I'll stick to my guns.

[Jazzhead]

Again, with the cars, how does having insurance or not having insurance change the way the car is stored?  How does it affect the rate of being stolen?

Underwriting.   Those who practice safe storage practices get lower rates.   Those who report thefts are relieved of liability.   Simple put, mitigating the cost of insurance encourages responsible behavior.   

[thackney]

You miss the point.   Cars and guns are inherently, and chronically, dangerous, and the their use causes thousands of deaths and untold injuries each year.   A person shot in the spine, for example, may be disabled and need care for the rest of his life.   You have every right to own a gun, just as you have every right to own a car.   But you do not have the right to expose others to deadly risks without compensation.

Register and insure your cars.  Register and insure your guns.

You continue to miss the point.  Cars are not required to be registered and insured because of the damage they are capable of doing.  They are required to be registered and insured because of WHERE they are used, public roadways.  Off-road vehicles capable of even more damage are not registered or required to insure because of WHERE they are used.

[thackney]

Underwriting.   Those who practice safe storage practices get lower rates.   Those who report thefts are relieved of liability.   Simple put, mitigating the cost of insurance encourages responsible behavior.

My vehicle insurance has no basis on where I store my truck.  This is a false claim.

[INVAR]

What a surprise!  @Jazzhead coming down on the wrong side of liberty...again!

You can take YOUR “reasonable and efficacious” and shove it. I find your “solutions” neither.  Keep your grubby little mitts off of MY freedom.

What more proof do we need to state the fact that Jazzhead is an enemy to absolutely every single thing we are beholden and are governed by in terms of principles?

The guy is a DU troll, I'm convinced.

[roamer_1]

The need to be responsible is inherent in the ownership of a deadly implement that has the capacity to harm others.  Insurance can be priced to be less expensive for responsible gun owners than for irresponsible ones.   

What absolute horseshit. A pencil is a deadly implement. So is a skilsaw. So is a brass floor lamp. So is a 1/64th scale model of the Empire State building.

And before you try to beg out of it, you are more likely to be bludgeoned to death than killed with a rifle, by the very same statistics you would cite. And nearly three times as many people are stabbed to death than rifles and shotguns combined.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2013/01/03/fbi-more-people-killed-with-hammers-and-clubs-each-year-than-with-rifles/
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/09/26/fbi-nearly-three-times-people-stabbed-death-killed-rifles-shotguns-combined/

What? no call for registering and insuring hammers and knives?

[Cyber Liberty]

You continue to miss the point. 

He's not missing his point at all, he just doesn't want to admit he wants the gummint to have a master list of where all the guns are.  He also doesn't want to admit why that is.

[roamer_1]

Insurance encourages safe storage practices and prompt reporting of thefts.   

'Safe Storage' negates the very purpose of the gun, and it's use.

How many people could have been saved if the Texan that stopped the bastard in the OP had is rifle out and ready for use?

[Smokin Joe]

You miss the point.   Cars and guns are inherently, and chronically, dangerous, and the their use causes thousands of deaths and untold injuries each year.   A person shot in the spine, for example, may be disabled and need care for the rest of his life.   You have every right to own a gun, just as you have every right to own a car.   But you do not have the right to expose others to deadly risks without compensation.

Register and insure your cars.  Register and insure your guns.

Wrong again. If I buy a car and a gun and set both on the ground out in the middle of the prairie and walk away, no one will be harmed by either.

They, therefore aren't dangerous--at all. They are inert pieces of metal and plastic and wood.

But cars and guns have a common factor when they are involved in someone getting hurt: the human.

People are dangerous. Not cars or guns, not even the much decried Corvair is dangerous without a human to make it so. Nor is a Ma Deuce. The problem isn't guns or cars, it's people.

Banning guns or cars will only force the malicious and idiots to find other devices with which they can threaten the sense of security people think they should feel in their social construct hamster runs that are only a few years removed from the (in some places still very real) threat of being shredded by wild beasts.

Actually, the problem is the wild beasts among them masquerading as humans. What some see as the solution to that is to go through life with neither tooth nor claw to defend home and family, nor the legs to run away.

Focus on those who are doing wrong, not the devices they use, nor those who own those devices and do no wrong. All your proposed 'solutions' do is create more problems, not address the ones which exist.

[Smokin Joe]

He's not missing his point at all, he just doesn't want to admit he wants the gummint to have a master list of where all the guns are.  He also doesn't want to admit why that is.

He also won't admit the government NEVER WILL have that 'master list'. Earle Stanley Gardner, who wrote the Perry Mason stories had a collection of homemade firearms, over 50, ranging from the crude 'zip gun' to basic hand cannons to well made semi automatics. There are a lot of machinists in the country, many of whom are out of work or retired, who would share their skill with the right people who could be cranking out guns tomorrow if they wanted to for fun and profit, and that doesn't include those who are just 'handy' when it comes to making things.

Anything people have a notion to do, they will. And that doesn't include the millions of perfectly serviceable firearms made before there were any restrictions whatsoever which have never been documented.

[thackney]

...There are a lot of machinists in the country, many of whom are out of work or retired, who would share their skill with the right people who could be cranking out guns tomorrow if they wanted to for fun and profit, and that doesn't include those who are just 'handy' when it comes to making things.

Add to that list 3D printing for most of the parts.  Only a good computer file is needed and anyone can turn out most of the pieces.

[Jazzhead]

Focus on those who are doing wrong, not the devices they use, nor those who own those devices and do no wrong. All your proposed 'solutions' do is create more problems, not address the ones which exist.

The correct response is to both,  within the confines, of course, of the Second Amendment.   Even car owners with the safest driving records still have to maintain insurance.   

As to whether what I propose "creates more problems",  that's the purpose of having discussions like this.  You've already gotten me to think about the virtues of fault-based vs. no-fault insurance.  Contrary to what the usual suspects say, I do not have any hidden agenda to confiscate guns or to make it harder for the law-abiding to defend themselves or enjoy their hobbies.   But gun violence is an epidemic.  Stating flatly that registration and insurance can't address the problems that exist is unhelpful and myopic.  Insurance is a time-honored and traditional way to allocate and mitigate risk.   

[thackney]

The correct response is to both,  within the confines, of course, of the Second Amendment.   Even car owners with the safest driving records still have to maintain insurance.   

Owning the car has no requirements for registration or insurance.  It is only the use on public roads that makes the requirement.  You keep trying to make this an analogy while ignoring the reason for the requirement.

 

As to whether what I propose "creates more problems",  that's the purpose of having discussions like this.  You've already gotten me to think about the virtues of fault-based vs. no-fault insurance.  Contrary to what the usual suspects say, I do not have any hidden agenda to confiscate guns or to make it harder for the law-abiding to defend themselves or enjoy their hobbies.   But gun violence is an epidemic. Stating flatly that registration and insurance can't address the problems that exist is unhelpful and myopic. Insurance is a time-honored and traditional way to allocate and mitigate risk.

What?  Pointing out that your "solution" doesn't correct the problem is unhelpful?  Myopic?  Don't we won't to solve the problem?

[austingirl]

[quote}There is nothing in the Constitution that gives you the right to expose others to deadly risks without compensation.[/quote]

And here I thought the Constitution and the Bill of Rights was designed to put restrictions on government and protect the rights of the people.
Guess I'll have to look at it again./s

[Applewood]

Just saw this.  No, I don't blame the survivors for not wanting to go back there.


Texas Church, Site Of Deadly Massacre, To Be Demolished

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/11/09/texas-church-site-deadly-massacre-demolished/848486001/

[To-Whose-Benefit?]

Actually, the Form 4473s are supposed to be kept on file by the dealer who sold the firearm. They get turned in if the dealer goes out of business or does not renew their FFL, for whatever reason. It is the NICS data which is supposed to be destroyed according to law, and yes, the BATF (and DOJ) has been taken to task over that data being compiled and stored.

Thanks for the clarification Joe. I'm an NRA Endowment sucker. And living in California I got burned out on being inundated in "Send $17.76 to us Now or Freedom Will Die", letters as the NRA did Jack S^^t nothing with my money to stop what was going on in Ca. When I left there 10 years ago I never bothered writing them to change where the magazines were delivered. So it's been a bit since reviewed that stuff.

[Jazzhead]

Owning the car has no requirements for registration or insurance.  It is only the use on public roads that makes the requirement.  You keep trying to make this an analogy while ignoring the reason for the requirement.

I know you keep repeating that fact again and again, and I'm frustrated because I just don't get what your point is.   I'm not citing car registration and insurance as an exact parallel to gun registration and insurance, but rather as an analogy for purposes of discussion.   As I said, what requires insurance is the use of the implement for its intended purpose.  For a car, that's driving it on a public road.   Fine, I understand - if it's kept in the garage and never driven, it doesn't need to be registered and insured.  But, again, what's your point?   

A gun's intended purpose can take place at home,  on the road, in the public square.   It can be dangerous if used for its intended purpose in any of those locations, so the mere fact of ownership and possession would, I propose, constitutes use for its intended purpose and trigger the insurance requirement.  Once it is out of your ownership and possession (that is, reported as stolen or transferred), then the insurance requirement ends. 

The only parallel I can think of regarding the point I think you're trying to make is dismantlement of the gun so it cannot fire.  A collector, for example, could alter a key part to render it inoperable and thereby avoid the obligation to register and insure.  If that's your point,  I understand and agree.   

[musiclady]

Just saw this.  No, I don't blame the survivors for not wanting to go back there.


Texas Church, Site Of Deadly Massacre, To Be Demolished

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/11/09/texas-church-site-deadly-massacre-demolished/848486001/

That seems like a really good decision.   There are so few people left in that congregation that were not killed or wounded.  It would be awful for the survivors to see the pews empty, and remember the carnage.

I am still so deeply troubled by this.  I'm not sure any mass murder has effected me so deeply as this one. 

[To-Whose-Benefit?]

What more proof do we need to state the fact that Jazzhead is an enemy to absolutely every single thing we are beholden and are governed by in terms of principles?

The guy is a DU troll, I'm convinced.

@INVAR

Invar I'm down with most of your cynicism, but in Jazzhead's case you don't go far Enough.

Remember what Eric Holder got for his Fast and Furious crime spree?

This is just a tiny part of it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/us/eric-holder-to-lead-democrats-attack-on-republican-gerrymandering.html

His peeps put him in charge of their boiler room to gerrymander every electoral district in America.

They're down but they ain't out, not by a long shot.

So why stop at DU?

Holder and O's crew don't like us at all, not by a long shot.

And I wouldn't put Them trolling us to gather info on Anyone they can run through a Kangaroo Court as an example to the rest of us, Past those low lifes for a heartbeat.

[Cyber Liberty]

Give it up, @Jazzhead, nobody on this forum is going to go along with your thinly disguised "insurance" scheme.   You can pretend it's already an established practice if you want, but I'm not going to play along.

[Hoodat]

It's an analogy, not an exact parallel.   A car that's undriven and kept in a garage isn't dangerous.   Whether a car or a gun,  insurance should be required when the implement is to be used for its intended purpose.

Another problem with the car analogy is this:  The purpose of car insurance is to cover accidents.  The event that occurred in Sutherland Springs was no accident.

[Cyber Liberty]

Another problem with the car analogy is this:  The purpose of car insurance is to cover accidents.  The event that occurred in Sutherland Springs was no accident.

The whole insurance business is wind in sails, a trick from the gun grabbers to make us think they're not really trying to grab them.  They are.  Anybody who says registration and insurance is a good idea is a poorly disguised gun grabber, protests to the contrary.

I spent a couple hours this afternoon trying to find a case of registration not leading to eventual confiscation, and I could not find any, but I did find several suggestions of using an insurance scheme as a backdoor to registration and eventual confiscation.