Like all addicts, we have to face some hard truths about ourselves. We love mass murders.

We live for them. The press loves them for all the eyeballs they bring. Politicians love the opportunity to make carefully overwrought comments on how dreadful these things are and how sorry, so sorry, they are for the victims and their families. The religious get to say the same but ever so much more gravely, of course.

The fact is, none of us is sincere.

And we know it.

Like all addicts we secretly long for the next hit. All the suffering families of victims that we see on the media feed our addiction. They are just part of the hit we long for.

To keep those hits coming, we cannot get rid of our huge gun caches. In fact, we add to them like crazy after every hit. The NRA makes sure that even ISIS-branded terrorists get government-assured, legal access to as many guns of whatever type they need for whatever they want to do whenever and wherever they want to do it.

From Sandy Hook to San Bernardino, we know that we want more and bigger hits. That’s just who we are.

Our addiction is so bad that the most we can do is manage it. And the best way to do that is to use our own system against itself.

How?

Publius’ answer is so simple that we will never do it.

Use our other national addiction: liability insurance.

It’s simple. Americans can have all the guns they want. Of any type they want. So long as every gun carries insurance just like a car. Minimum liability per gun: $1 million. The more guns you have, the more you pay. The more powerful the gun, the higher your liability and the higher your premium. Open carry? Just pay.

Anyone found with an uninsured gun gets a mandatory twenty years, for each offense. Because drug legalization is inevitable, we will have a lot of empty prisons in poor parts of the country where jobs are scarce. Publius’ mandatory twenty will fill these prisons fast and keep jobs.

Insurance companies will police gun ownership. You won’t be able to buy or sell a weapon anywhere or anyway without getting insurance. Insurance companies will determine the conditions of ownership as they do with cars—like who can drive and who cannot—and the standards of owner training and gun management.

Make a mistake and the liability bar will eat you alive.

Here’s where our next national addiction steps in: we like money. A lot.

Whoever gets into the gun insurance business first and fastest has a shot at beating out Walmart as the biggest company in the world. If the NRA leadership can count, it will be that insurance company. Its members will have their Warren Buffett Moment. Now we are talking!

And all the money that will be made training gun owners to qualify for insurance? Bring it on!!

The liability bar likes the money in this so much that Publius has lawyers all over him begging for a plan to give its lobbyists.

The best part? Taxpayers don’t spend a dime! We get to keep our guns and cut crime at no cost.

Let’s face it, we will never get over our lust for mass murder. We are who we are. But we can make a hell of a lot of money managing our addiction and cut dead the flow of weapons to killers.

Makes a lot of sense, right? And that’s why you won’t hear a word about this in the current election cycle. Not even a syllable. This addiction is real deep.

Follow Up

May 6, 2016

A great New York Times piece chronicled how urgently the U.S. needs Publius' Smart Policy on guns. Penned by Jack Healy, Julie Bosman, Alan Blinder and Julie Turkewitz, it shows how on only one week four toddlers shot and killed themselves. Smart Policy in place and the costs to the gun owners would have been way too high to let them be so foolish.

July 14, 2016

Well, we've since had massive overdoses Orlando and Dallas. As always, the drugs used were supplied by our top drug dealer, Congress, which ensures that any terrorist with any motivation can get any gun needed to commit any murder anywhere and any time. Congress lives for this stuff.

February 16, 2018

Thank you Congress!! Once again you have ensured that we pay the price for your addiction to mass murder. Face it, you LOVE what happened in Parkland, Florida!! The deaths of 17 in a high school there was exactly what you wanted for America. Well done!!

You will NEVER use Publius' solution to our murder addiction because it would mean serious rehab. And that, you cannot handle.

April 16, 2021

We are now running at one mass shooting a week. The NRA is still sticking to its guns. It loves this stuff. Congress is right there with it.

#guns #NRA #NationalRifleAssociation #liabilityinsurance #SandyHook #SanBernadino #JackHealy #JulieBosman #AlanBlinder #JulieTurkewitz