“While Ethical Markets agrees with most of the ideas on guns in this CNN program today, we would like to add another market-based reform: Require all guns sold to carry insurance (as with cars), however many are acquired.
This would be a huge windfall of new business for the beleaguered insurance industry, once they realize that their healthcare business in the USA, is becoming increasingly untenable. As businesses, large and small, begin to realize that a single payer system (based on prevention) would relieve private companies of the huge cost burden of providing health insurance to their employees, they will be delighted to support phasing in “Medicare for All”. And employees would be freer to move to jobs they like!
Thus, a new, mega-billion dollar coalition is possible between US companies of all sizes and insurance companies, that can at last, take on the NRA. Feedback please! Dear colleagues: We can publish all your responses. ~Hazel Henderson, Editor.”
First, Fareed gives his Take on the mass shooting in Las Vegas, and why “the quick assumption of mental illness distorts the discussion.”
“First, it smears people who do have mental disorders. Such people are not inherently highly prone to violence. They are more often victims of violence than perpetrators. And to the extent that some are violent, they are more likely to inflict harm on themselves,” Fareed says.
“Second, turning immediately to the ‘sickness’ of the shooter and piously calling for better mental health care is, more often than not, an attempt to divert attention from the main issue: guns. Every conversation about gun deaths should begin by recognizing one blindingly clear fact about this problem — the United States is on its own planet.”
Then, Fareed hosts a panel to dig deeper into the issue of gun violence in America. Joining Fareed are Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist and author of Thank You for Being Late, David Frum, a senior editor at The Atlantic and author of an article this week titled “Mass Shootings Don’t Lead to Inaction — They Lead to Loosening Gun Restrictions,” and Leah Libresco, a statistician who used to write for FiveThirtyEight. She wrote an article on gun violence in America earlier this week in which she argues that calls for sweeping gun control are probably misplaced.
Watch Friedman discuss how shooter backgrounds impact response
Next: Fareed is joined by Akhil Reed Amar, a law professor at Yale University, who looks at the history of the Second Amendment – the interpretations over time, and how much leeway there might in U.S. law to tackle gun violence.
Watch Amar discuss how interpretations of Second Amendment have evolved
Also on the show: In 1996, Australia experienced the worst mass shooting in its history, prompting a conservative government to pass strict gun control laws and to buy back over 600,000 guns already in circulation. Fareed speaks with Tim Fischer, the deputy prime minister at the time, about how the government managed to pass such legislation.
Plus: Japan’s gun homicide rate is astonishingly low. It also has some of the strictest gun laws in the world. Fareed explores how Japan has handled the issue of gun control.