The United States is not going to give up on guns. Not now, not anytime soon. Some guns owners are pretty vocal they won’t agree with any kind of regulation of their freedom to own guns, as they consider their gun an insurance which could save their life. That’s fair, maybe they are right after all. That doesn’t mean we non-gun-owners have to pay the price for it.

In fact, we are fed up paying the price all over again. Dead people, wounded peoples which need to pay the bills, may never be able to work the same way they did before. Guns have a cost on society, and it is time gun owners pay that cost, not others.

My proposal is simple: let’s make gun owners be liable for the damages caused by guns, and like we do for cars, let’s force them to buy an insurance. It is not fair people can and sometime will cause so much more damage than they will ever be able to repay for. It is not fair with their car, it is not fair with their gun.

Everybody would be responsible 100% for the damages they cause, but when people are not able to repay, the insurances would need to pay the victims what remains of the bill. Whichever that number is, as decided by experts and courts.

Now, if gun owners do not want to pay for crazy people that use their guns, fine, they can just choose an insurance company that only covers people that accept to do a background check, or people which agree to leave their weapon at their training/hunting site, or people who don’t buy assault riffles, whatever insurance companies think might be relevant to decrease the risk.

We can let the market sort it out. Sane gun owners will pay very small insurances because they will comply with sane regulations -- not because they are forced to by any government, but because it will costs them less money. And if their insurance companies need to pay less money, that means that these measures will actively reduce the amount of people killed or wounded by guns, something the American society desperately needs.

Guns activists who refuse to go through background checks will still be free to do so, and spend more money on their insurance. Their choice. Their freedom is not changed in any way, but we will finally let the market sort it out, instead of having the force regulations down the throat of people. Inefficient regulations will not drive insurance costs lower, and people will ignore them and chose insurances that don’t force them to comply to them, while efficient regulations will save people money, and save people’s lives at the same time.

Seems like a win-win.