Health insurance companies are vampires.

As an alternative, and a measure that I think would reduce the numbers of guns in our country more than any other, I propose that anyone who owns a gun should be required by law to insure that gun for enough money to pay for medical care for any person or persons who might be injured by that gun.

That would eliminate a lot of the guns in our country.

That would also make gun registration a useful thing.

Because I don't really see what background checks and gun registrations will do to stop serial killers. Most of them would probably pass and register their guns. We don't recognize the mental illness of the gun-crazy in most cases until after they have killed.

Americans go around threatening to kill people. It's a horrible misuse of language, but if you are in a helping profession, you will hear it. When do you report a person? When do you just let them vent?

Pastors (yes, pastors), psychologists, doctors, lawyers, mental health professionals of all kinds right now have the ethical obligation (at least in California) to report a client or patient who in their view poses a real danger to others.

What more can you really do than ask those professionals to report as they are required to do?

Having a list of names of people who own guns? What will that do?

Requiring people to insure their guns. I think that would increase the awareness of gun owners about their potential liability for not only their own guns but those of others. I think if we could just pass that law, we could make progress with regard to changing the awareness and attitude toward gun ownership in the US.

help the mentally ill.
help stop the carnage.
most mentally ill people are not killers.
all killers are mentally ill. imho

A shitload of lawsuits go away with a national health plan.

A good chunk of the caseload in state courts consist of lawsuits wherein the parties are proxies for different insurance companies over who has to pay the medical bills.

Example - you fall on the sidewalk outside my house. Your health insurance provider will find out that I have homeowner's insurance, and thus demand that my insurance cover your medical bills. My homeowner's insurance will dig into your medical background and refuse to pay some portion of your bills attributable to a condition you already had.

What happens in this situation is that you have to sue me, in order to have a court determine whether your medical bills were attributable to your existing condition or to the slip and fall on my property.

With a national health plan, none of that happens, and everyone's insurance rates go down.

...'getting paid for' when someone gets big injuries like that. Even after insurance, unless it's one of those really nice OH HI I'M WEALTHY SO I COULD AFFORD THIS ONE policies with 100% after a deductible, the vast majority of people will simply let it go because it can't be paid off.

Of course, once that happens they'll never have credit again, but credit is overrated.

EDIT: In case it isn't obvious, I support the call for more national health care!