REsponsibility in Firearms Legislation (RIFL)
Let's end the subsidy to the firearm industry paid by taxpayers.
The firearm industry is the only for-profit industry in the U.S. that carries no liability for the foreseeable, known, and inevitable harm their products cause.
Each person wounded by gunfire faces an average $82,000 in medical bills. Every year, taxpayers pay $12.2 billion dollars for the uncovered and unpaid costs for medical services that trickle down to the states' Medicaid and Medicare. And every year, the cost of firearms injury cost employers $465,000,000.
Let's require firearms manufacturers and distributers to pay into a no-fault fund in each state to be used to pay hospitals, physicians and other medical staff, and reimburse victims, and small business for the subsequents direct costs of gun injury.
About
Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done. --Louis Brandeis
The RIFL Alliance is a national movement that calls for Responsibility in Firearm Legislation. State by state, we advocate for passing the RIFL Act. Although the name of the law may vary according to state, our objectives are identical: 1. To require standard corporate accountability in the firearm manufacturing industry to relieve the public of an unfair financial burden and 2. To establish and administrate a no-fault restitution fund, paid 100% by licensed firearm manufacturers, to provide wrap around services for individuals and secondary survivors of firearm injury.
The Fund would become the first payer of all direct costs associated with firearm injury and death from suicide, homicide, accidental and unintentional shooting.
These costs include funeral and burial expenses; medical treatment, trauma therapy, physical therapy, lost wages, medical devices, and other goods and services required as a consequence of a shooting injury.
Our non-partisan consortium includes and welcomes taxpayers, employers, professional associations, including those in the insurance industry; hospital administrators; labor unions; mental health organizations; veterans associations, individuals and neighborhood organizations; firearms owners; and educators, among other individuals and affinity groups.
Members of our Alliance are sick and tired of paying hundreds of millions of dollars in tax money year after year to cover costs for the known and inevitable outcomes of using a firearm as it it intended. They understand that being shot is a trauma that is distinct from every other type of traumatic injury and death because of the complex psychological, legal, and social repercussions experienced by the injured and their families.
The ultimate goal of the RIFL Alliance is to motivate the firearm industry to engage with elected officials, business leaders, law enforcement officials, and constituents for common sense gun legislation to reduce firearm injury. Reducing the incidence of firearm would decrease the levy manufacturers would be required to pay into the restitution fund.
Corporations in every other industry in America are held accountable for the harms caused by the goods and services they produce for profit, whether that enterprise is the construction of a high-rise apartment building, the manufacturing of an automobile or the sale of a property. Bringing the firearms industry on par with these corporations ensures that the same rules apply to all businesses in every industry in the United States.