So, how do you figure that licenseing/insuring/registering a fire arm would stop anyone from killing others, just wonderingj? Thanks.
And, BTW, I personally have no real answer to the terrible amount of murders in the USA, whether it be by gun or other means.
When we required liability insurance for cars accidents went down. Why is that? Well the insurance companies had a vested interest in lowering the cost and amount of accidents. They lobbied for laws like seat belts, and air bags, and a whole long list of other things. They rated cars on their safety, etc.
How an insurance agency can reduce the killings
The insurance companies would bring that same approach to bear on guns.
1. How many kids are accidentally shot in the house? They will make having a gun safe a big savings item and in that way more people will have them, use them and that will help.
2. They will give discounts to people who take gun safety classes and who knows out of thousands of people that may also reduce the people who are shot.
3. They will deny insurance to gang bangers so if they are ever caught with a gun it will be unlicensed, uninsured, and those two offenses alone allow the police to hold these guys for weeks while they investigate if this gun has been involved in any crimes.
4. If someone like this shooter in Texas or the guy who shot up the Batman movie buys 3,000 rounds of ammo and two expensive guns the insurance agency will be notified immediately. They have powerful computers, algorithms and AI which would figure out immediately we have a red flag. These things generally take a few weeks before an event. They could put their investigators on it immediately to check social media and see if this guy has posted anything. An event like we saw in Texas could cost them $50 million so as the red flags keep popping up the urgency to investigate and hopefully prevent such a thing would justify any expense. They might question people at school and neighbors who say this guy is trouble. Within 24 hours they might realize he has made 83k worth of purchases with seemingly no income. If you have a company with all the resources in the world, $50 million worth of motivation to prevent a killing, and three or four red flags they might even hire a private eye to watch this kid around the clock. One of the very big common factors in all these shootings is that the people post stuff on the internet or their friends, neighbors or classmates know they are trouble. Imagine if you gave that school a 30 minute warning to go into complete lockdown. The Super discovers one door has been sabotaged, he gets a lock and chain and locks it from within. The kid is not getting in the building. Not only so but two police in a police car meet him as he drives up to the school with the private eye following.
But all of that is window dressing. Here is the biggest advantage
5. The vast majority of gun violence is in the five or six biggest cities in the country. Police could shut this down very quickly if they had a little help. Right now every gun has an identifying mark they leave on the bullet and on the shell casing. Police find shell casings and bullets at a crime scene they can immediately, within an hour or two, get that ID on the gun. However, they are not allowed to have a digitized record of all guns, so they then have to compare that ID with millions and millions of IDs on paper. It is impossible. However, if every gun were insured all the insurance companies would have a digitized record. The police could send out this ID to all insurance companies who would then have to check their records to answer the subpoena and then send back the information. Since the guns are tracked from manufacture the trail will probably lead to a store that sold a hundred guns to a mule. Gangs hire guys without criminal records to drive somewhere, buy all their guns and then come back. This would lead the police to the mule. He would probably argue that the gun was stolen from him. However, if fifty guns he bought from this store all ended up in the hands of gang members who committed crimes he could be tried as an accomplice. The police can now shut down this store and the mule, shutting off the supply of guns to the gang. If guns become scarce they won't throw them away and thus when the police arrest gang members with guns it won't just be unlicensed and uninsured it will put them as being involved in those crimes.
Right now the police are being overwhelmed. They have other tools that would be very helpful in solving gun crimes, but this is the big issue. Fix this problem and people who commit crimes with guns will be caught, prosecuted and taken off the streets and soon felons won't own any guns.
So yes, every now and then we get some guy without a record who shoots a bunch of people, but 90% of the killing is done by felons. Get the guns out of the hands of felons and you will solve 90% of the problem.