VICE admits banning AR-15s would do little to stop mass public attacks so they are calling for owners of the rifles to be forced to buy insurance as a way of collectivizing risk.

They do not denounce the ban on principle, but because their are already so many AR-15s in circulation.

VICE’s Krishna Andavolu writes:

I tend to agree with the seemingly obvious idea that AR-15s and other assault weapons serve to ramp up the carnage during mass-shooting events. But statistically speaking, they don’t account for a large share of these tragedies. Which is why I think there’s something more at play when considering the rifle and the idea of forbidding people from buying them.

He adds:

There are too many AR-15s in the country—approximately eight million, according to the NRA—for a ban on future sales to prevent their use in further mass shootings. Unless the US were to enact an Australian-style buyback and amnesty initiative, there’s little to suggest these kinds of guns wouldn’t be used in illegal ways to kill people again, regardless of future regulation.

From here Andavolu moves to consider ways to offset what he sees as a risk posed by ownership of AR-15s and similar rifles. He says, “So instead of banning these rifles, states should require gun owners to buy insurance in case their gun is used to kill wrongfully; that way, at least victims and their families might recover some financial damages.”

Lost in Andavolu’s calls for AR-15 insurance is the fact that rifles of any kind, much less AR-15s in particular, are rarely the weapon of choice in homicides. On October 16, 2017, Breitbart News reported FBI numbers showing more than four times as many people were stabbed to death in 2016 than were killed with rifles of any kind.

Additionally, a Rockefeller Institute of Government study which examined 1966-2016 found that mass public attackers preferred handguns over “assault weapons” by a three-to-one margin.

Lastly, requiring insurance to exercise a constitutional right is tantamount to requiring Americans pay a fee in order to claim that right.

This, in turn, leads to the ability to make the right cost prohibitive, thereby diminishing poorer citizens’ ability to exercise rights that are theirs at birth.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.