Promoting change in America's Gun Culture

While the nation is still absorbing the shock and grief of the Sandy Hook massacre in  Newtown, CT, there are many offering the solutions to the problem of gun violence. "Stop the culture of violence", "screen the population for mental illness", "re-institute legal prohibitions on certain types of guns and ammunition", "arm the good guys and put them in the schools", are among the policies being suggested.

It is time for us to seriously consider the realistic causes and effects of gun violence. At the same time. we need to be carefull that we don't allow politics to distract us into building a welfare system for the special interests that are simply looking for a problem to buy or fund their prepackaged solution.

For example, NRA Executive Vice President Director, Wayne La Pierre,who  proposes to protect the children with armed guards in all of the nation's schools. This is a very naive proposal and self serving solution. What will be the add to the cost, psychological and financial of placing armed guards in schools that already the current underfunded in the poorest districts? And what will be increase the profits of the gun manufacturers and NRA?

 We also need to be careful that the solutions being proposed don't blinded us to the broader, long term consequences of gun violence. These are the costs that leave the victims and society to pick up the costs inflicted by the availability and right to use of a gun. The problem is the way our culture values the Gun and the Right to own a Gun. We must not lose sight of the fact that focus must be on Gun and gun ownership.

The problem as Bob Costas observed, is 'Availability of guns makes mayhem easier'

How do we change our Gun Ownership Culture?

 I had a friend in graduate school, Margie, who after completing her MA in anthropology went on s to earn an MBA in accounting. One night at our local applied anthropology group, we were discussing the problem of promoting culture change in the communities where several of us were working in OEO community Action programs. Maggie raised a critical point, based on her MBA perspective, about how culture change can be facilitated by accounting. It has been something that has stuck with me for a half century.

 "In a modern society, if you want to really change a culture, then change the accounting rules," she advised.

By this she meant "by changing the accounting rules for identifying assets and liabilities. you can.change an asset into a liability and a liability into an asset." This then changes the way we look at things. We do this all the time when we create legislation that favors one interest over another.

For too long we have emphasized the asset side of the right, allegedly, enshrined in the 2nd Amendment. We have ignored or downplayed the liability side. We need to change our thinking about the Gun and the liability one assumes by choosing to own one.
  
Managing Our Gun Culture:

First, we must allow that we can control (i.e. manage) guns in our culture without taking away the individual right implied by the 2nd Amendment. This is necessary if we are to engage in a real debate and not the usual pointless partisan bickering.

Second, we must attach a real price to the responsibility of exercising one's right of ownership.  The gun owner must be held accountable for any and all liabilities arising from gun ownership. We can legislate this without challenging the 2nd Amendment by establishing the explicit principle that to own a firearm also to assume all of the liabilities that arise from such ownership.

Under such legislation, ownership would carry an implied consent to accept all the liabilities of ownership and the responsibility for the costs associated with the ownership. These liabilities would be attached to each specific gun owned regardless of who or why it is used. That is, the owner bears all risks associated with the status as owner of the gun.

Ownership and liability begin at the moment that gun becomes operational either through manufacture or importation. The gun must be registered and the ownership declared.at that moment.on takes control of the gun. The liability can only be transferred through a recorded sale or registered barter transfer of ownership with the proper authorities.

The gun owner's right ownership is not "infringed" by such legislation. But. it places responsibility for the gun on the gun owner and is priced based on the risk of a specific person and the gun owned. The owner retains the right to chose whether to buy a gun and what type of gun he/she will own. Under such legislation the risk associated with buying the gun would be market driven and the price of insurance or risk of not getting insurance would represent the full price of ownership.

Incentive for insurance

Such legislation would create an incentive for the insurance industry to create and offer insurance products to protect the owner against the liability that the risk of owning the gun. The Insurance industry would have an incentive to price their policies based on criteria similar to those they use for life and automobile insurance, e.g. the individual's physical and mental history and condition, and background (just like life insurance) and the lethality of the gun, its capacity ( clips and bullets), and proposed use (e.g, collection, sport, self defense, occupational, etc.).

The insurance premiums generated would create a pool of funds to compensate the victims resulting from any misuse of that specific gun. There are an estimated 300 million guns in the United States. Insuring these should be very profitable for the insurance companies.

Need for information

Right now, Does anyone know what the total cost in dollars (this is what a court would consider if it rendered a verdict on a private reckless endangerment law suite) for the victims (families, school, students, community, etc.) including the burial, mental health service, public health and security services, etc. generated by owner of those guns used at Sandy Hook?

The insurance company is the logical private sector data collector. They can demand that their clients provide the information that their actuaries would need to compute the risks and to price of policies. Meanwhile, the public authorities would have the authority to demand aggregated data on gun ownership and use they require to oversee the public policy related to gun regulation. For specific individual data from the insurer, the authorities would be required to obtain a court order before the information could be released to the authorities. This would create a solution solve a major problem in the collection of data and protecting personal privacy.

This is a private sector solution to control guns which employs the concept Maggie shared with us that night for bringing about culture change in a modern urban society.