[HailGreen28]

Another post by an anti-gun nut with so many logical failures:

Originally Posted by Giantone

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/op...oney.html?_r=2&

Make Gun Companies Pay Blood Money
GUN manufacturers have gone to great lengths to avoid any moral responsibility or legal accountability for the social costs of gun violence — the deaths and injuries of innocent victims, families torn apart, public resources spent on gun-related crime and medical expenses incurred.

We have an entire industry of car insurance set up to cover "the social costs" of the automobile industry. Imagine if instead of the great sums of money we all pay insurance, taxes were raised on cars to cover the same amount. What do you think would happen to car sales? Yeah, same thing this proposal's backers want for gun sales. Except for those playing or actually dumb of course.

Originally Posted by Giantone

But there is a simple and direct way to make them accountable for the harm their products cause. For every gun sold, those who manufacture or import it should pay a tax. The money should then be used to create a compensation fund for innocent victims of gun violence.

Guns are bought for legitimate purposes, like marksmanship, hunting, and self defense. Why not financially go after the people who actually use guns to commit crimes? Why not keep them "accountable"?

Originally Posted by Giantone

This proposal is based on a fundamentally conservative principle — that those who cause injury should be made to “internalize” the cost of their activity by paying for it.

Epic logical fail here. This proposal doesn't go after those who cause injury. By taxing all gun sales, it shifts the costs to the vast majority of gun owners, who use guns and DON'T cause injury.

Originally Posted by Giantone

Now, gun manufacturers and sellers are mostly protected from lawsuits by federal law.

Lol. The same law that protects every other industry, where unless the company is negligent in the product it makes (defects, deceptive advertising, etc.) whackos can't try penalizing the industry out of business.

Originally Posted by Giantone

As it happens, a model for this approach already exists. Under the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, those injured by vaccines are eligible for compensation from a fund financed by an excise tax on the sale of every dose of vaccine.

Another epic fail in logic. In the case of bad vaccines, the company that made the defective drug is at fault. In the case where someone misuses a working gun, that individual is at fault. The same way that if someone tampered with or deliberately misused (forcefed, misprescribed, etc) a medicine, THEY would be at fault, NOT the drug company.

Originally Posted by Giantone

In creating this no-fault system in the 1980s, Congress sought to provide care for those injured by vaccines while protecting manufacturers from undue litigation

Because medicine is a trickier thing, with people's different reactions to drugs, unforeseen combinations of circumstances, disease evolution, etc. And there's always the uncertain balance in public interest between getting a needed cure out quickly vs. safely. None of which apply to guns, therefore the above mention of the vaccine policy does not follow.

The above proposal is just another poorly thought out rationalization, to try taxing the sale of guns by law abiding people out of existence. Typical.

Overthemountain had a better proposal. Go after the people who actually cause harm. Going back to the vaccine analogy, which is flawed but just to contrast, vaccine companies pay for harm they actually inflict themselves. Contrasting cars is kinda flawed too, there's nothing constitutional about owning one, but look at how with insurance you cause harm your rates go up. Giantone's proposal would shift that cost away from those who actually cause harm to EVERYBODY.

It's hard to take anti-gun groups seriously about stopping gun violence, when their target is all gun owners rather than the people who actually cause harm.