Today’s quote about activism.
“It is ignored ‘til it makes a bang”
– Zeynep Tufekci on protest movements.
I’ve determined that cities in states with super gun preemption laws may need to rewrite their insurance requirements for special events on city property. If they don’t, the cities will be on the hook financially for gun accidents on city property.
Insurance vendors for municipalities need to review city policies to ensure the city is correctly insured.
City risk managers need to understand that it is their fiduciary duty to protect the city from expensive liability lawsuits on their property.
If the city decides to pass this burden to others, such as vendors holding events in their parks and convention centers, they need to inform the vendors, and the vendors’ insurance agents. If vendors find out that insurance costs go up 1000% they will look for other venues.
But all of this is just background noise ’til it makes a bang.
The stories about the financial impact of guns take a back seat to the physical impact of guns.
It’s hard to make news when you prevent an accident. Passive methods that prevent gun injuries aren’t newsy.
So what CAN make news?
It’s news if events are canceled because celebrities entertainers don’t want guns at their events. That’s page 1 news.
It’s news if city administrators are sued by the NRA for violating state laws the NRA got passed.
(If the NRA loses and the city administrators win because the courts concur that administrators have a fiduciary responsibility to protect the city’s assets that’s page 2 news.)
You CAN make news when multiple cities all must review and change their insurance policies.
You CAN make news when alcohol vendors learn insurance costs go up by 1000% to cover for accidental gun coverage at city events.
We are in a time when shootings are so common they barely make the news. The news about the aftermath of shootings are even harder to find.
Unlike most people, I see stories of shootings caused by negligence every single day.
I see stories of people legally carrying a concealed weapon in a place it is legal anciently shooting themselves or others. But what happens next is rarely seen.
Who pays for the medical coverage? Who pays for the pain and suffering of the innocent bystander?
To see the impact of these shootings you need to aggregate them.
I can show you 18 injured and 2 dead across the country in one day, but it’s not the same as it happening in one city at one school in Kentucky.
Aggregation of death and injury across time doesn’t have the same news value as instant. So to make those death and injuries bigger news, we need to design actions that can be news that have a moment in time impact.
If cities/ vendors/ or promoters lose multi-million dollar lawsuits because of a gun accident on city property that is small page 3 news if it even makes “the news”
If the reason is that the vendor/promoter could have held the event at a location that DID banned guns, but they chose not too, that too is news, but it won’t be big news.
If insurance companies start charging 1000% more for all events to cover gun accidents in places where guns are legally allowed it’s big news to certain people. You won’t see it on TV, maybe not even in the papers. But the people who have to pay, or cancel an event and lose revenue, this news will force a response that stories about dead children or protests in the streets might not. It’s the kind of activism that forces people to change their policies.
