#GunControl: Sensible Solutions, Not Rhetoric

So after hearing and watching the news reports of the Walmart mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, I woke up Sunday morning to yet another mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio late Saturday night. In fact, it was the 251st mass shooting of 2019. Moved with emotion and sorrow, I posted this on my personal Instagram account on Sunday:

When will enough be enough? How many more lives must be lost in mass shootings before we act as one nation to enact sensible #guncontrol.
#ElPaso #Dayton #MassShooting

A few minutes later, someone I did not know posted these comments on my IG:

I was not even sure how to take their comments. I was amazed and aghast at how desensitized the individual seemed to be to these events. After all, lives were lost, people were dead and injured, and families have been irreparably harmed.

With Sandy Hook and the many school shootings on the top of my mind, I hastily typed this response (with typos):

I'm tired of 'thoughts and prayers'. I'm tired of people who live in American cities defending the need to own assault rifles. Period. You do not need an assault rifle to defend yourself or the safety of your family. I'm all for constitutional rights and an advocate for people being entitled to the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. However, we place limits on when a person can drive, how fast a person can drive on streets and highways, and how much insurance is needed in order for you to legally drive a vehicle on the road. These laws have been passed to save lives, your life and the lives of your community members. I'm tired of the rhetoric from politicians and anyone who feels the need to equate their 2nd Amendment rights with the "need" to own and carry an assault weapon on the streets of American cities.

We as a nation require that an owner of a car who drives it on U.S. roads have both a license and insurance. Is this too much to ask of people who own guns? And if you fail to secure your gun or report it stolen, especially an assault or rapid-fire type of weapon, should not you be liable for any damage it causes?

I propose that legal gun owners should be both licensed and insured with insurance similar to car insurance. And before you purchase a gun from an individual, gun shop, or box store, etc., you need to have a license and insurance proportionate to the amount of product you want to buy. 

Just think how situations might change if gun manufacturers, gun dealers, and individual owners had to carry gun insurance for not only their inventory or personal property, but also comprehensive coverage for any damage caused by any unreported gun that was originally licensed to them. Just like you call the police to report when your car is stolen and expect that that information is entered into a database so that if the car is involved in an accident and someone gets hurt or killed, you will not be liable, the same should apply for gun shops, box stores, manufacturers, and individuals, etc.

These mass shootings have got to stop and become a rarity and not a common news item. Please make America safe again for every day people who want to attend a music festival, hang out with friends in a club, pray with their eyes closed in a church service, send their children to school to learn in a safe environment, and take their family to Walmart to school shop.

We need sensible solutions not rhetoric. It's time to act! No more excuses. Offer some solutions.

These are my thoughts. What are yours?