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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (789210)	6/11/2014 3:17:12 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576308

Hi Bill; Re: "Doesn't sound like a useful policy to me. The number of incidents of homicide or major misuse of legally registered firearms is miniscule compared to the total number out there. The bond premium would be negligible if market based. And it probably would cost more to administer the law than any public benefit derived."; The number of homicides per year in the US is about 350 rifles, 6000 handguns. So just looking at homicides, a pistol would cost about 20 times a rifle and to get an idea, we can ignore the rifles completely. (Of course you knew this already.) Of the 192 million firearms, about 65 million are handguns. If we wanted a tax of $100 per year for a handgun, and we ignored all crimes other than homicide (which is silly, but that seems to be what drives the left), the value of a pistol murder would be $100/year x 65 million / (6000 murders/year) = $1.1 million per murder. Of course this would be an average. The vast majority of murders would presumably be done by people who carry no insurance. I know gun collectors who have maybe 20 pistols (and typically a lot more long guns). These people tend to be fairly well off and not prone to violence; I would think their cost might be less than $100 per year. As far as adding a cost to a hobby, I don't think $100 per year is terribly significant. I only own one long gun right now (foreign military surplus bolt action similar to .30/06, I love it), and I'm putting together an AK-47. I would think my cost would be very low. On the other hand, if you happen to be a rap artist with a long record of arrests, your gat license could get pretty expensive. This is basically a libertarian approach to the problem. You already accept that ownership of a car means you are legally required to obtain car insurance. The basic fact is that cars are very useful but every now and then they are involved in killing people at the fault of the owner. So they have to be insured. Your car insurance depends on your history of using / abusing the things and they depend on what kind of car you'll drive. I don't see why guns should be significantly different. Home owner insurance might include a gun policy the same way your insurance covers you if your pool manages to drown someone. -- Carl P.S. Interesting numbers I blundered into while thinking about this. Top countries for guns owned per capita are: 89.0 United States 58.2 Serbia 54.8 Yemen 45.7 Switzerland 36.1 Cyprus 35.0 Saudi Arabia 34.2 Iraq 31.6 Uruguay 31.3 Sweden 31.2 Norway 30.8 France 30.4 Canada 30.3 Germany 30.3 Iceland en.wikipedia.org I had no idea Europeans were so gun happy.