In a recent incident, a 3 year old boy Timorej Smith in Greenville, S.C. shot himself with a pink hand gun that he thought was a toy

We seem to be so hung up on a phrase in the second amendment that states “the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” that we seldom remember the preceding phrase “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state.” Seems to me that keeping the arms was contingent on being part of a militia. Many of the founding fathers feared a standing army more than anything. So in the place of a standing army, the founders preferred part time militias with member bringing their own guns.

But since all the focus is on the second phrase of the second amendment, may I make some suggestions for what I believe are common sense solutions to the whole question of keeping and bearing arms?

The first suggestion would be to engineer in safety. Back on the old factory floor, we dealt with many machines some made in-house and some bought from outside. One criteria was they had to be as safe as possible when running. This would mean things like hand and face guards in place, ability to cut power quickly without any possibility of accidental restart and other such safety precautions. In other words as much safety was engineered into the machine as possible. What couldn’t be engineered in was then covered by procedure which we were tested on all the time. Human injury was the very last thing the company wanted to deal with. Especially after OSHA came into being.

It would sure seem to me that there is a lot of room to engineer safety into a gun or rifle. One safety feature that I have heard is already to go is a feature that could check a fingerprint scan or an eye scan. If the scan does not match the scan of the person that owns the gun, the gun wouldn’t work. This is just one I have heard of. I am sure there are more. But if the gun was only able to be used by the owner, the chances of having a gun stolen and then used in a murder or robbery would be greatly lessened.

Given a chance, I know engineers can be quite creative in coming up with ways to make sure a gun is only being used by the persdon who owns it.

Second, since the gun is like the car in that even when used as directed, it can still cause loss of life and huge damages by accident, I believe that gun owners should be forced to carry liability and comprehensive insurance to cover the innocent victims of the guns they own. This would be an additional source of revenue for insurance companies. Rates would be formulated much as they are for auto owners. Over a period of time the insurance companies would have enough actuarial history to make solid rates. When purchasing a gun, a purchaser would have to pass a background check and present a certificate of insurability. More than likely the insurer would create yet another background check for its own purposes.

This would also help take care of one of the seldom thought about side effects of gun violence – who pays the hospital bills and the who pays for the cost of living if a victim can no longer work? Often we hear the sensational story of the shooting, but we seldom hear the followup on a victim.

We don’t hear of the multiple surgeries, we don’t hear of the rehabilitation so a person can just live, we don’t hear of caretakers or family members who must quit their jobs to care for the victim, we don’t hear of lives shattered by loss of income. The list can go on and on. In the case of an automobile, insurance provides funds for the victim of an accident. The same should be true of a victim of gun accidents or purposeful violence.

Insurance would not be an infringement on the ownership of a firearm. It would merely add responsibility to the ownership of that firearm. The gun would cost money as would fulfilling the requirements to maintain ownership.

Finally, insurance would not cover all the expenses of innocent victims or may fall short in the case of extensive care. Right now the cost of repairing lives is borne by the health insurance of the victims. When that runs out or if the victim has no health insurance (still a huge number in the US) who pays the cost? Well in the end we do as a society. As much of that cost should fall back on those who choose to own a gun as possible. This could be done by establishing a victims’ fund, fed by user’s fees on gun purchases and bullets.

To me the final two suggestions are simply market based solutions. Let the users pay for the injuries, deaths and damages that their guns or the guns of fellow owners cause. Or in the words of my Republican friends, take responsibility.