A Few Thoughts on Guns and Loss

     A score of children were lost on Friday to a young man, not much more than a child himself, who obviously had problems. He took his own life after ending the lives of twenty seven others. There is so much to blame that you don't know where to start. Access to firearms, check, access to the technology that can turn a gun into a means of massacre, check, lack of access to a mental health system that could have helped the gunman, check.
     There is no solution that will easily solve these problems. Funding is needed to make access to weapons more difficult. Funding is needed to provide care to those people who could commit such crimes. And where do we get that funding?
     We know that the NRA spends a huge amount of money every year lobbying to protect the rights of gun owners. Maybe a percentage of their budget should be appropriated to safeguard the public. I've seen figures from $200 million to more than $300 million as their budget for 2010. That is just the budget for one year. Imagine how much better our mental health system might be with that influx of funds. It wouldn't cure the problem bit it sure could help.
     Now this part is all me...based on what I know of the way things work. Make gun owners carry insurance. You carry insurance for your cars and your homes and your boats. What if every registered gun owner had to buy a policy that would cover them for use of their firearms. The law in most states makes sure you have a policy in order to drive a car in case something goes wrong. Well what if something goes wrong with a gun? Make sure there is a pool paid into for the damages that are inflicted to the families and community when these horrors happen. Because we all know it will happen again. It has happened time after time and public grief and the call for action will not keep it from happening again.  
     If responsible gun owners were going to have to pay for the losses caused by the few they may force better rules to be in place. Rules like mandatory trigger locks and the banning of military style weapons  sales to individuals. They would turn to the NRA and demand action be taken. There are safety labels galore on a ladder or an extension cord but I've never seen a warning label on a gun.
     It is true that people kill people. but people with guns can kill a lot of people in a very short period of time. People that might be six or sixty. Lets make it harder for this to happen. Please.