What America Learned from Cars—and How to Apply It to Guns

The Hidden History of Guns and the 2nd Amendment

How America became awash in guns, mass shootings, and child murders in our schools. Over the next few months the entire book will be here, new chapters posted every Sunday, for subscribers to read at no cost. If you want to get a physical book to mark up or share with others, just click on the picture above, visit your local bookstore, or check your favorite online seller.

Chapter 27

What America Learned from Cars—and How to Apply It to Guns

A lot of the people who keep a gun at home for safety are the same ones who refuse to wear a seat belt.

—George Carlin

While there were a number of automobile manufacturing companies in the late 19th century, it was really at the turn of the 20th century that cars became a hot commodity in the United States. 

R. E. Olds rolled out the first assembly line in 1901, but it was Henry Ford who cranked the popularity of cars up a notch with his “first version” of the Model A in 1903, and then developed the assembly line to crank out the Model T in 1908. 

By 1927, around the time he rolled out the “second version” of his Model A, he’d sold more than 15 million cars. 

So it was that, around 1915, many states began to notice that cars were killing people. They were being hit on the roads, dying when drivers didn’t know how to avoid running into trees or off bridges, and having accidents with horse-drawn carts and other automobiles. 

This presented the lawmakers of most states with a serious question: what to do to protect the public, including the car owners, from the dangers of death and disfigurement that cars presented? 

The answer that most states came up with, and has now largely been standardized across the US and most of the world, was a very simple and straightforward three-part criterion for car ownership and operation.

1. Establish ownership. In order to be able to manage all the cars coming onto the roads, both as valuable pieces of theft-worthy hardware and to track liability issues, all cars were required to have a Vehicle Identification Number (VIN), which was stamped onto the car during manufacture and followed it until the day it was destroyed or decommissioned. Similarly, the owner of that car and its VIN had to present himself or herself to state authorities and sign a title of ownership, which had to be recorded with the state whenever the title was transferred to a new owner. 

2. Prove competence. By the years around 1915 there had been so many fatalities and serious injuries attributable to cars that the states decided they wanted only people driving on public roads who knew how to handle a car properly. This meant defining rules for the road, having people learn those rules, and testing them—both in writing and practically in person—to show that they truly could drive safely. When people passed the tests, they were given a license to drive. 

3. Require liability insurance. Because virtually all car accidents were just that—accidents—most people who “caused” accidents were at both financial and legal risk. Many were fine, upstanding citizens (in fact, because cars were expensive, most car owners fell into this broad category). And they wanted some defense against the chance of making a mistake and ending up in jail or broke because of lawsuits or the liability costs of caring for people they’d injured. What came out of this was the development of automobile liability insurance and the establishment of a requirement for it to be carried by all owners/drivers. While most states adopted this requirement substantially later than 1915, it’s now established as a fundamental part of the three steps necessary to drive a car. 

Which brings us to today. 

These three things that America does for owners of cars are perfect to deal with America’s gun problem:

• Registration and title—as a requirement rather than an option—would establish a clear chain of custody and responsibility, so that when people behaved irresponsibly with their guns, they could be held to account. 

• Having a shooter’s license be conditional on passing both a written and a shooting-range test would demonstrate competence and also insert a trained person into the process who could spot “off kilter” people like the Parkland shooter. Taking a cue from most other countries, America could also require people to prove a need or sporting/safety use for a weapon. 

• Today, if a car had run down mass-shooting victims, their families would be getting millions from GEICO, et al. Because a gun killed them, they get nothing. This is bizarre in the extreme; all Americans end up paying the costs of gun violence. The simple solution is to require all gun owners to carry liability insurance, just like all drivers must. The insurance would even be a “free market” solution in that, as with cars, insurers would charge much more (or even refuse coverage) to “high risk” people, such as those with domestic assault convictions. 

These three steps are nothing but common sense and don’t infringe on the “rights” of gun owners any more than they infringe on the “rights” of car owners. They could even provide a stream of revenue for gun-owners’ organizations that chose to train people to prepare for their licensure test and/or offer low-cost liability insurance.